


Walking Tall

by Heleentje



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Children, Gen, Major Original Character(s), Minor Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-13
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-09 21:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heleentje/pseuds/Heleentje
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raising a child between traveling and mediating conflicts was never going to be simple. But then again, for Juudai and Yubel, simple had never been part of the plan anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Child of Thousands

**Author's Note:**

> The kanji for Chiyoko is 千代子. Compare with Juudai's 十代.

**1\. Child of Thousands**

Summer in the Dark World was very warm and very sunny, which was ironic in ways Juudai didn't let himself think about for too long. They were two days away from the nearest village, and starting to run low on food, but Juudai wasn't worried yet. If they really got in trouble, they could always teleport or fly. Juudai'd only insisted on walking so he didn't miss out on anyone who might need his help. It was a decision Yubel had initially been reluctant to follow, but after almost four years of traveling, it had become a habit, comforting in its familiarity. Here in the Dark World, Juudai tried to avoid any actions that would mark him as anything but a traveler. His reign as Supreme King hadn't yet been forgotten, and more than one person would gladly kill him when given the chance. Juudai didn't even blame them for it.

So a little past noon, when the sun was at its highest point, they were following the river that should lead them to the next village. Yubel had opted for walking, and she seemed to be suffering from the heat as much as Juudai was. Only Daitokuji-sensei looked perfectly comfortable. Being dead had its advantages.

"Let's stop for a bit," Juudai said with a quick glance at Yubel. She nodded and pointed him to a rocky outcropping up ahead. It made for an ideal resting place. Juudai fished a reluctant Pharaoh out of his bag and grabbed a bottle of water and a package of food they'd received two villages ago. He passed on the water to Yubel and unwrapped the package. All things considered, the Dark World was very beautiful. He tended to avoid this world more than any of the other eleven dimensions, but on days like today, he could forget about the past for just a little bit. He rested his feet in the water while he ate, watching as Pharaoh wandered off towards a nearby group of trees. The cat would come back, and if anything went wrong, they had Daitokuji-sensei to warn them.

"How much further do you think we should go?" he asked.

"Another two days at least," said Yubel, a slight frown on her face. "Don't you think it would be better to go back home?"

Yubel had never really considered Japan her home, Juudai knew, but it made for a convenient base of operations. His parents tried their best to be around if they knew Juudai was coming, and were even starting to get along with Yubel. Sometimes he did miss Duel Academia, but he didn't think the school would be happy with him claiming the Red Dorm for himself.

"Just a bit longer," he replied. "I just want to be sure that this area is doing fine."

He finished his part of the food and watched as a couple of fish went for the crumbs that had fallen into the water, then scrambled to get his feet out of the water when a passing Rainbow Fish took too much of an interest in them.  _Johan can have that one_ , he thought sullenly as Yubel snickered behind him.  _What kind of fish has tusks anyway_?

He'd just put on his socks and shoes again when Daitokuji-sensei reappeared, looking agitated.

"Juudai-kun, can you come for a second? You might want to see this."

"Something wrong with Pharaoh?" Juudai asked, jumping up and grabbing his duel disk. Daitokuji-sensei shook his head and led him to the small group of trees Pharaoh had disappeared into. It was significantly cooler here than next to the river. Maybe they should relocate. He almost walked straight through Daitokuji-sensei when his teacher stopped next to a large oak tree surrounded by bushes. Someone had left a large backpack next to the tree, but Daitokuji-sensei didn't look very interested in it.

"So what's wrong?" Juudai asked.

"Under that bush here," said Daitokuji-sensei, pointing. Juudai crouched down. "I think there's a child down there."

"What, really?" Juudai immediately spotted the bundle hidden away under the bush. For anyone else the constant play of shadows would have made it difficult, but shadows were one thing Juudai didn't have trouble with. He got up and parted the branches, careful not to disturb the bundle underneath them. It didn't look like a child, but if Daitokuji-sensei said so…

"Well, what do you know," he muttered when he finally got a good look at the bundle. Serious, blue-gray eyes stared up at him. "How did you get here?"

He picked up the child and got up again. The baby was watching him without making a single noise.

"Pharaoh found it," said Daitokuji-sensei. Pharaoh chose that moment to appear. He meowed when he saw Juudai, then again, more plaintively, when Juudai failed to pay attention to him.

"Maybe the parents are still nearby?" Juudai looked around, and his eyes fell on the backpack he spotted earlier. "This might be theirs."

_Juudai?_

Ah, Yubel. She was probably wondering what was taking him so long.

_Everything's fine. We, uh. We found a baby._

…  _I'm coming._

Juudai grinned. He could almost imagine her shaking her head. He studied the child in his arms more closely. It looked… Well, it looked like a baby. Juudai frowned. He'd never really been in close contact with children. He didn't have siblings, and he didn't know whether there were any young children in his family. Still, the baby was kind of cute. It wasn't crying, at least.

"How'd you manage to find a baby?" Yubel asked, walking up to him. She put Juudai's bag down and studied the child. "They don't grow on trees."

"I didn't go looking for it," Juudai protested. "Anyway, I think the parents might still be around. They left their backpack here. We should just wait for them to come back."

"Why would they leave their child on its own?" Yubel said softly, a peculiar look on her face. Juudai shrugged.

"They can't have gone far." The baby had obviously been cared for recently. It didn't look hungry, and the cloth it had been wrapped in was clean, except for a few patches of dirt. Juudai stared at the backpack. However curious he was, he shouldn't open anything that didn't belong to him. He sat down carefully and brushed the few wisps of light brown hair away from the baby's forehead. It was still staring at him, eyes wide. How old would it be? No more than a few months, clearly.

"So," he asked contemplatively. "Do you think it's a boy or a girl?"

**oOoOo**

It turned out to be a girl. It also turned out that Yubel was remarkably proficient in taking care of children. By the time the sun started setting, no one had returned yet, and the baby, who'd been sleeping peacefully for most of the afternoon, had started snuffling. It had turned into a full-blown crying fit within minutes. After several minutes of watching Juudai's panicky attempts at calming the child, Yubel had smiled and plucked the baby out of his arms. By the time Juudai caught up with her at the river, she'd already unwrapped the bundle and was cleaning up the girl.

"See if there are any clean things in that backpack," she instructed Juudai when he emerged from the trees.

"It's not our stuff."

"It's their baby. They can't blame us for taking care of their kid when they're not around."

Hard to argue with that logic. Juudai retrieved the left-behind backpack and rummaged through it. Yubel had guessed right. Whoever the girl's parents were, they'd stocked up on enough material to see their daughter through the next several days. He found a dark red gown and watched over Yubel's shoulder as she changed the baby with quick, efficient movements. By the time she'd been dressed again, she was looking sleepy once more.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" Juudai asked in a hushed voice.

"I've done it before," Yubel said, rocking the baby softly. "See if you can find food, okay? She'll need to eat soon."

"When?"

Yubel shrugged. "Within the hour, I'm guessing."

"No, I mean, when did you learn to do that?" Juudai said. He was sure he would've remembered Yubel taking care of children.

"Oh." Yubel's face gained a faraway look. "It was back before we met… I was still living at the city orphanage. The older kids were supposed to help take care of the babies. There were worse chores."

Yubel didn't often tell him about the time before they'd met. All Juudai really knew was that she'd been left at an orphanage as a baby, and spent most of her life there before meeting him.

"So then you ran away."

"Yes. You know the rest of the story."

Juudai did, both from Yubel's stories and his own memories. Still. He grinned down at her.

"Tell me again."

Yubel sighed and looked at the baby in her arms. The girl was fast asleep.

"It's not that the people at the orphanage ever mistreated us," she began, "but it wasn't a nice place. You were stuck there. Once you turned fifteen, you'd end up working at some place they chose for you, and that was it. I didn't want to follow orders for the rest of my life. So when I was ten, I ran away. I don't think I'd actually expected to stay away for good. I thought they'd find me after a day or two and then I'd be back at the orphanage. But still, I needed to do something for myself. Just once, I wanted to make my own decisions.

"So I ran off, and hid close to the palace, though I didn't know that at the time. It actually worked out quite well for me. When I couldn't beg, I stole. There were enough rich people who didn't pay attention when some kid ran into them. The people of the orphanage never did come looking for me, and I was quite happy like that."

"And then I came."

Yubel smiled. "And then you came. Little rich boy, all alone. Easy target. You never even noticed when I made off with your money. Your guards did, though."

Juudai laughed sheepishly. He hadn't even known that there were guards following him that day. He'd just wanted a day outside the palace and thought he'd made a clean break for it. When his bodyguards had shown up with Yubel, he hadn't even realized he'd been pickpocketed.

"I thought it was weird. Why would you steal?"

"Oh, you said so." Yubel shook her head, but like Juudai, she was smiling. "You asked why I needed to steal.  _'Can't you just ask your mom and dad for money?'_ I really wanted to hit you right there and then."

"Yeah, sorry about that."

Yubel laughed. "You do know you were a spoiled brat, don't you?"

"Good thing I had you, huh?" Juudai said, resting his head on Yubel's shoulder. "Hey, look."

The baby was awake again, and listening to Yubel's story attentively. She cooed when she noticed them looking.

"Where do you think she comes from?" The sun had already set, and still there was no trace of anyone. Who would just leave their child like that?

"She's a spirit," said Daitokuji-sensei. Juudai nodded absently and studied the child. That didn't exactly narrow it down. Most dimensions contained life, and monster spirits were far more common than humans. The baby was starting to look sleepy again. Why had her family hidden her? Where were they and where had they gone that they couldn't take her with them? He could think of just one possibility, and he didn't like it.

"You don't think they're dead, do you?"

"It's possible," Yubel said, and her face told him she'd thought of the same thing, probably long before Juudai himself had. If the girl's parents were dead… Juudai knew far too well how death worked in the Dark World. With no body left behind, it would be nigh impossible to find out who the girl's parents were and where she came from.

"We'll stay here for tonight. If no one's come for her by tomorrow, we'll go on to the next village and ask around," Juudai decided. He threw another glance at the sleeping baby. Poor kid. If her parents were really dead, what was going to happen to her? What should they do? He got up and opened the pack again. Maybe they could find some clues inside.

What he dug up, apart from more supplies for the baby, was a book in a language he didn't understand. Far more interesting was the picture hidden away between the two last pages. There was the baby, held by a pretty woman with dark blond hair. He didn't recognize her right away, but something about her stance made him think of a warrior, even though she wasn't armed in the picture. Next to her was a man who had to be the girl's father. He too looked like a warrior, but just like the woman, he was unarmed and relaxed. His hair was a lighter shade of blond than the baby's mother. All in all, the picture of a happy family. Juudai showed the picture to Yubel and Daitokuji-sensei.

"Ring any bells?"

Yubel shook her head. Daitokuji-sensei stared at the picture for a long time.

"As a teacher I should know them, Juudai-kun, but I don't recognize them." He looked disappointed with himself. "They may not be wearing the outfits we're used to."

Juudai studied the picture again. Both the man and the woman were dressed practically, wearing dark trousers of the same stretchy material that seemed ubiquitous among the travelers he'd met before. The woman had opted for a forest green shirt with a black jacket tied around her waist, whereas the man had gone for a blue coat. All clothes that left them a lot of freedom to move. Juudai chalked up another point towards his warrior theory. Maybe they traveled around a lot? It would explain why they were out here with their child.

"We'll ask around," he repeated. He tucked the picture back into the book and put the book with his own belongings. It was safer there. The baby was still fast asleep in Yubel's arms and didn't show any signs of waking up. They would be safe here for tonight. Tomorrow they might find answers.

**oOoOo**

The night was uneventful, only interrupted twice by the baby crying and a bleary-eyed Yubel telling Juudai to watch, so he could be the one to get up next time. By morning, no one had shown up, and Juudai reluctantly prepared to leave. It looked like their earlier hypothesis had been correct. He still left a note pinned to the tree where they'd found the baby, but he wasn't getting his hopes up. Maybe the girl still had family somewhere. Their best bet was the village they'd been traveling to anyway.

They reached the place a little past noon. By general consensus, they'd opted for flying to speed things up. They'd lost a lot of time the day before, and walking with a baby was not very comfortable anyway. This village was bigger than the last one they'd been in, but only barely. Two hundred people, three hundred at most. They saw lots of toddlers, but few older kids, much like everywhere else. Juudai swallowed. Consequences. His past still haunted him, and it would keep haunting him as long as he lived.

The village head, a Fallen Angel Marie, greeted them warmly and introduced herself as Miryam. Unfortunately, the baby had her flummoxed.

"I know about everyone who passes through," she said, "but I'm sorry. We haven't had any visitors lately. You're the first ones in weeks."

"I see." Juudai poked the baby lying on his lap. She gurgled and started suckling on his finger. Yubel fished the book out of Juudai's pack and took out the picture, which she handed to Miryam.

"We found this. Do you recognize them?"

Miryam tapped the picture, deep in thought. "They do look familiar… Can I see that book?"

Yubel pushed it towards her.

"It's not written in any language we speak here. Not in this dimension, I believe, but I could be mistaken. It's a large place." She picked up the picture again, and her face suddenly brightened. "I think I know the woman. Different Dimension Warrior Woman."

"Different Dimension?" Juudai asked, frowning. That wasn't good.

"Yeah. I didn't recognize her without the armor, but I'm sure of it. I used to have a neighbor who came from another dimension. That was before Haou, of course."

She shook her head with the same faraway expression that Juudai had seen on so many people who'd lost their loved ones. He shrunk into his seat.

"I'm very sorry."

Miryam smiled at him. "It's not like you could've helped it. None of us stood a chance against him. It wouldn't have been worth suiciding yourself."

Juudai looked down at the baby. She tightened her grip on his finger.

"I don't know if you'll find more information there, but there's a town called Marastre near the coast, about a week's walk from here if you stick to the river," Miryam told them. "It's worth a shot. If her family came from across the sea, they'll have stopped there. The mayor's an old friend of mine. He'll be glad to help you out."

Juudai found his voice again. "We would be very grateful," he said.

Miryam smiled when Juudai tried and failed to free his finger. "You should stay here for a few days, though. We're expecting bad weather. It's not a good time to travel with a child."

She gave them directions to a small inn and left them with the instructions to come back if they needed anything. None of them spoke until they were outside again.

"Different Dimension. That complicates things," Yubel said.

"Tell me about it." Juudai shifted his grip on the baby. If her parents were Different Dimension spirits, she might not even be a native to the Dark World. There was no way that they would be able to search every dimension for people who might not even be alive.

"We'll go to Marastre. Then we can decide what to do with her," Yubel said, holding out her arms. Juudai handed her the baby, and the girl cooed. Juudai smiled. Cute kid. He would miss her when they found a place for her.

"You know, you could just teleport us there," Yubel continued after a few seconds of silence. "Then we'd avoid the bad weather."

Juudai thought about it. "I'd rather fly, if it's all the same. Maybe we'll find her parents. If we teleport, we'll definitely miss out on them. Besides, if we stay here for a bit, we can give them the chance to catch up if they find our note."

Like Miryam had predicted, it rained for the next four days. Unfortunately, the constant rain did nothing to lower the high temperatures, and combined with the humidity, it was making everyone irritable. On their fourth day of being cooped up in the small inn, the baby spent several hours crying, and nothing they tried could calm her down.

"C'mon, what's the matter with you?" Juudai muttered. He'd tried to feed her, clean her, even spent a fruitless thirty minutes singing half-remembered lullabies to her. Nothing was working, and he was already resigning himself to the inevitable complaints of the other inn guests. He sighed and leaned back against Yubel. She wrapped an arm around him.

"Can't you do something?" he asked plaintively. Yubel was just better with the child than he was.

Yubel tapped the girl's nose. She didn't stop crying.

"Come now, Chiyoko. You're just going to make yourself tired."

"Eh?" Juudai looked up sharply. "Chiyoko?"

Yubel looked vaguely embarrassed. "She needs a name."

"Yeah, but why Chiyoko?"

Yubel let go of him and fished for a piece of paper and a pen. The first name she wrote was Juudai's. Then, underneath it, she wrote three characters.

"Child of a thousand generations," Juudai read. "Chiyoko."

"And ten generations. Juudai," Yubel continued, pointing at the kanji of Juudai's own name. "See?"

"You're making it look like she's my daughter," Juudai said, grinning. Yubel didn't smile back.

"She needed a name," was all she said.

And apparently the newly-named Chiyoko needed a pen as well, because by the time they realized the crying had stopped, she'd already managed to steal Yubel's pen. The ensuing fight to keep it out of her mouth and avoid ink stains took up the better part of the next five minutes, and by the time they'd finally managed to get her to calm down, Juudai was already used to the name.

**oOoOo**

They said goodbye to Miryam on the next day. The woman seemed very amused that they'd named the baby, but she didn't say anything about it. Instead she just gave them supplies for the journey and a letter for the mayor of Marastre.

"He knows you're coming," she told them warmly. "Good luck. Take good care of your kid, okay?"

"Will do." Juudai waved goodbye. Daitokuji-sensei too looked very amused about something, but he refused to share when Juudai asked him about it.

Even flying, the journey to the town still took them three days. On the third day, blessedly free of rain, they could start to smell salt in the air. The sea was close, and Marastre was even closer. They reached the town only a few hours after noon. After getting spectacularly lost and spending another two hours wandering around, they finally managed to locate the mayor's office. He was a large fiend with a severe demeanor, but he treated them kindly.

"Miryam informed me, yes," he said, reading over the letter Miryam had given them. "I have consulted with some inns in town, but they haven't seen anyone who matches your description. You can go check yourself, of course."

"We will. Thank you."

"Have you considered what you will do with the child if you don't find her family?" the mayor asked. "This world isn't always friendly. There's a good chance that they're already dead."

"We know." Juudai bounced Chiyoko on his knee. "We're thinking about options."

"The town orphanage would be quite willing to take her. Their staff are highly trained."

"We haven't made a decision yet," Yubel said abruptly. "It is far too early to think about leaving her behind."

"Suit yourselves. You'll be able to find accommodations all over town, depending on your budget."

And with that, they were dismissed. Once outside, Juudai glanced at Yubel. She looked troubled.

"Something wrong?"

"No, it's fine," she said, but Juudai wasn't sure if he believed her. She was keeping her thoughts locked off from him, and he knew when not to pry.

They found an inn that allowed babies and fell within their budget. They would be able to afford their room for a few days. After that… Yeah, Juudai didn't know. When they ran out of money he either went back home or found a job for a bit, but with Chiyoko around, he wasn't sure if either option was possible. He wasn't quite ready to give up the search yet.

But after a week it was becoming clear that the people in the picture hadn't been in Marastre either. Juudai was beginning to despair. They would need to move on soon, and he couldn't spend all his time looking for two people who might be long dead. He still had a duty to fulfill. On the other hand, he didn't want to give up on Chiyoko either. He was finding himself looking forward to spending time with the baby. Apart from the occasional crying fit, which Yubel had been quick to ensure him was perfectly normal, she was a calm baby, who didn't mind the large distances they covered every day.

On their last evening in the inn, Juudai and Yubel slept with Chiyoko in between them. The baby slept through the night.

"I don't think we're going to find her parents," Juudai confessed to Yubel the next morning. Chiyoko was still asleep between them, and Pharaoh was curled up against Juudai's legs.

Yubel sighed softly. "I don't think so either."

"I guess we could leave her here. At the town orphanage," Juudai said. Yubel turned away.

"I guess."

"They'll take care of her."

"They will."

Oh, not this again. "Yubel, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."

 _As if I'm going to believe that,_  Juudai thought. Something was really bothering Yubel about this whole situation, and- Oh.  _Oh._

He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. "I'm being stupid again, aren't I?"

"You're not stupid, Juudai."

"Yes, I am. Because you grew up in an orphanage. And you ran away from it."

He didn't have to see Yubel's reaction to know he was right.

"They will treat her well," Yubel said slowly. "It's not- It wasn't a bad place."

"But you hated it." No, this wouldn't do at all. So if they couldn't find Chiyoko's family and they weren't going to leave her behind-

"We could, well, keep her," he said hesitantly, not looking away from the ceiling. He felt Yubel shift next to him.

"What do you mean?"

"She's going to need someone to take care of her, and we've managed it so far without messing up. And well, you already gave her a name."

"You… Want to adopt her?" Yubel sounded conflicted. "We lead a dangerous life. What if we have to go somewhere where we can't take her?"

"Johan can babysit, right? Or Manjoume," Juudai said. He brightened. "I bet Hayato wouldn't mind!"

"You really want to keep her." Yubel sounded almost awed. Juudai turned onto his side again and grinned at her.

"It's really only logical, isn't it? If we can't find her parents, and we won't leave her behind-"

"-we'll take care of her. I… Guess. Okay."

Juudai smiled brightly. "That settles it, then." He caressed the baby's cheek. "Looks like we're going to be your parents from now on, Chiyoko."


	2. Tangible Identity

One thing Juudai hadn’t been looking forward to was explaining Chiyoko to his parents. However hard they had been trying, they still weren’t completely okay with their son traveling across several dimensions and wielding the powers of darkness. Yubel had complained about it often enough, and while Juudai understood their reluctance very well, it still hurt. Explaining to them that they were now grandparents? Not exactly in his top ten of favorite things to do.

 

Still, putting it off had never done him any good, so upon returning from the Dark World, only a few days after they’d left Marastre for a final, lackluster scan of the area, they stopped in Japan first.

 

If anything, Juudai’s parents were always glad to see him, and this time was no exception. His mother ushered him and Yubel in and hugged them both, but didn’t ask about the baby. Biding her time until his father joined them, Juudai decided. He didn’t complain. It gave him some time to calm down a restless Chiyoko. Japan was very different from the Dark World and all the new impressions were starting to overwhelm the baby.

 

It only took a few minutes for his father to join them. He too looked curious about the baby, but only when they’d all settled down did he ask about her.

 

“So Juudai, what have you been up to?”

 

Juudai considered avoiding the subject, but decided to just bite the bullet. “Uh yeah, about that. You guys have probably been wondering about her?”

 

Juudai’s parents shifted uncomfortably. Juudai took it as a yes.

 

“This is Chiyoko. We, uh, adopted her.”

 

“She’s our daughter,” Yubel said.

 

His parents… Took it better than he’d expected. His mother took a long drink and his father sighed.

 

“I rather expected something like that when I saw you with her,” he said. “But Juudai, you’re only twenty-one. Aren’t you too young to raise a child?”

 

“Papa, we couldn’t just abandon her. Her parents are probably dead.”

 

“This is one of those things we won’t be able to change your mind on, is it?”

 

“No,” Juudai and Yubel said simultaneously.

 

Juudai’s mother drank again, then put down her glass with a decisive clink.

 

“Have you thought about how you’re going to raise her?” she asked. “A baby takes time and effort. Are you going to stop traveling around?”

 

She looked like she wouldn’t mind. Juudai shook his head. “We… Can’t. I have a duty as protector of this universe. But we’ll probably take shorter trips whenever possible. I think Johan can take care of her if we really have to leave.”

“Johan? Your friend from Europe?” It was the first time that his mother sounded outright disapproving. “Are you really going to drop off our granddaughter with someone on the other side of the world? Do you really think we don’t want to take care of her?”

 

Whoops. Bit of a misstep there. “It’s not that!” Juudai hastened to correct. “You guys would do great. Probably better than myself. But the thing is, Chiyoko isn’t human. She’s not from this world. Her parents… I believe they were a Different Dimension Survivor and Different Dimension Warrior Woman.”

 

He’d looked that up as soon as his laptop had connected to the internet again. Miryam had been right in saying that Chiyoko’s mother had been Different Dimension Warrior Woman, and while the card art for Different Dimension Survivor wasn’t very clear, the resemblance with the man in the picture was uncanny.

 

“What difference does it make that she’s not human?” his father asked. How things changed. Five years ago, it would have made his parents freak out.

 

“Yubel?” Juudai whispered. She nodded and at once stopped using her powers on Chiyoko. The baby lost her solid form. For his parents, it must’ve looked like she’d disappeared in thin air.

 

“What-”

 

“Chiyoko is a spirit,” Juudai said. His eyes glowed briefly and his daughter reappeared. “The only reason she’s solid now is because we’re keeping her that way. When we’re gone she’ll revert to her spirit form and you guys won’t be able to see her. Johan can see spirits.”

 

“I don’t like that,” Juudai’s mother said. “I don’t want her to be on the other side of the world. Don’t shut us out, Juudai.”

 

“If there was another solution… I can ask Manjoume or Hayato, then she’ll still be in Japan.”

 

It clearly wasn’t to his parents’ liking, but it was the best he could offer.

 

“Juudai, we know we haven’t been the best of parents, and I can’t say I really understand what all this darkness protecting the universe stuff is about, but please let us help with this,” his father said slowly. Pleadingly. Juudai rocked Chiyoko in his arms. He knew his parents loved him and genuinely wanted the best for him. He knew they were trying their best to understand. It wasn’t always enough.

 

“We probably won’t have to leave anytime soon,” he said. A peace offer.

 

“We’d be honored if you could help us,” Yubel said, voice stilted. She didn’t like speaking in situations like these. “We could use your experience.”

 

“Yes… Yes of course.” And then his mother was up and about, all barely contained energy. “Have you thought about the paperwork yet? Obviously you can’t say she’s not human, so we’ll have to find a solution for that, but she looks human enough, right? Do you have clothes? Food? You can stay here for a while. I think we still have your crib.”

 

She bustled upstairs. Juudai’s father looked after his wife with the slightly stunned expression he always got when she got like this. Finally he just shook his head and looked back at Juudai.

 

“Chiyoko’s a pretty name,” he said.

 

“Yubel chose it.”

 

Yubel smiled tentatively and Juudai’s father smiled back. He shifted.

 

“Well, this is unexpected…” He swallowed. “So, Juudai. If she’s my granddaughter- Can I hold her?”

 

Juudai smiled widely as he handed over the baby. He still had to inform all his friends, and there were so many things he hadn’t even considered yet, but somehow, he thought, it would probably be okay.

 

**oOoOo**

 

Manjoume called him an idiot. Then he called the Ojamas idiots for fawning over ‘Chiyo-chan’, but even so, he still agreed to help forge a birth certificate. Juudai just hoped no one would look at it too closely. He couldn’t very well tell the city registry that he’d just found her. That was one legal mess he did not want to get into.

 

“You owe me for this, Juudai,” Manjoume grumbled, picking up the phone and dialing. “Of course you’d do something like thi- Yes, hello. I need to talk to Chosaku. Yes. Tell him it’s his brother. Jun. No, it very much can’t wait!”

 

Silence on the other side. Juudai thought he could hear hold music. Chiyoko tried to free herself from Juudai’s arms and crawl onto Manjoume’s desk.

 

“Isn’t she adorable, Aniki?” Ojama Yellow gushed. Chiyoko reached out to him, but lost her balance, and Juudai quickly pulled her back onto his lap. “Look, she likes us. Hello, Chiyo-chan!”

 

“Be quiet, will you? I- Yes, Chosaku, it’s me. I need a birth certificate.”

 

Juudai could hear shouting on the other side. Manjoume shouted right back.

 

“What? No, I don’t have an illegitimate chi- I don’t need a press cover-up! Will you listen to me?” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s for Yuuki Juudai, from school. He picked up a kid. Yes, I know.”

 

He covered the receiver with one hand. “Okay, he’ll do it. You’ll need a birth date, no more than fourteen days ago. Actually, make that a week. Chosaku’s going to need time to have the certificate made.”

 

“She’s at least four months old!” Juudai protested.

 

“You need to register within fourteen days, or you’re going to have trouble at the registry. You don’t need to take her with you, so they won’t check.”

 

“Fine then.” Juudai set himself to answering Manjoume’s questions, who relayed them to his brother over the phone. After almost half an hour, they finally settled on Domino City as a birthplace and finished the list. Manjoume hung up.

 

“Chosaku should have it by the end of the week. I’m going to have to sit through a lot of family dinners for this one, so don’t think I’m going to let you forget this.”

 

“Thanks, Manjoume.” Juudai grinned. “I guess you won’t be babysitting, then?”

 

“Get out of here, Juudai.”

 

Juudai cheerfully hummed a tune as he walked towards the elevator in Manjoume’s building. Time to go tell his other friends.

 

Neither Kaiser nor Edo called him an idiot and neither needed to; the look on their faces said more than enough. Edo quite empathically told him to find another babysitter. Juudai didn’t tell him that he hadn’t really been on the list of options to begin with. He suspected that Edo might actually be disappointed.

 

Shou was a bit more enthusiastic than his brother, but when Juudai offered to let him carry Chiyoko, he backed away with wide eyes, and only ever dared to take the baby’s hand. Chiyoko immediately latched on to his finger and didn’t let go until it was time to leave. Grabbing things was quickly becoming one of her favorite pastimes, and she much preferred living creatures. She’d just started crawling, and Pharaoh was quickly becoming one of her favorite targets.

 

Fubuki-san predictably loved  Chiyoko, and Asuka just shook her head, a bit sadly, when he told her, but she too seemed to take a liking to the baby. Juudai had never really doubted that Johan would be enthusiastic about the baby, and he had been right. Despite the Gem Beasts’ mockery, Chiyoko was immediately approved of by Johan and his family. So when he asked Johan to babysit, what he really didn’t expect was a no.

 

“I’m flattered, really,” Johan said with a glance at Yubel. “I mean, really, it means a lot that you’d trust me with her. But I can’t.”

 

Juudai shook his head, still trying to get over his surprise. “I’m sure you’ll do fine-”

 

“No, I mean, I literally can’t take care of her. I’m physically incapable,” Johan interrupted. “What happens when you guys are gone? In this world, spirits aren’t tangible. I won’t even be able to touch her, let alone take care of her.”

 

“What about the Gem Beasts?”

 

“We’re rather lacking in the opposable thumbs department,” said Amethyst Cat.

 

“We absolutely can’t take her with us if we have to go anywhere,” Juudai said softly. “I won’t let her get hurt. But I can’t not go either.” He held out his arms and Chiyoko started crawling over to him, then changed course with a happy, “ _Fa_!” when she spotted Pharaoh.

 

“Can’t you make her solid permanently or something?” Topaz Tiger said. “She looks human enough. No one’d notice.”

 

That was true. Chiyoko’s features were a kind of eclectic mix that would make her look foreign no matter where on earth she went, but she would still be able to pass for a human baby with little trouble.

 

“No.” Yubel hadn’t spoken yet, but now she did, and she didn’t look particularly happy with the turn the conversation had taken. “I don’t want her solid permanently. You people always get stuck the moment you’re in danger. I want her to be able to escape whenever she’s in trouble.”

 

Juudai nodded, ignoring the dig that had probably been aimed at Johan anyway. She made a good point. Of course, that still didn’t solve their problem.

 

“Okay. How about something she can hold on to. An item, something she can wear. Wait, can you do that?” Johan said, looking at Juudai. “Transfer your powers to something else?”

 

“Never tried it. You mean give her a necklace or something?”

 

“Maybe not a necklace, but…You know those golden ID bracelets? She wouldn’t be able to take it off easily and it’s no danger to her.”

 

“Johan-kun makes a good suggestion, but may I propose silver instead of gold? The alchemical properties of silver are highly suited for conducting magic and the supernatural,” said Daitokuji-sensei. Juudai wondered if he should be worried about the slightly manic expression on his face. “While both silver and gold are part of the seven alchemical symbols of alchemy, silver works extraordinarily well for the purpose you intend, far  better than gold. You can use it as a base material for-”

 

“Sensei, you know I’m no good with alchemy. We’ll take your word for it,” Juudai said with a grin. Daitokuji-sensei looked sorely disappointed and muttered something about fusions and perfect examples.

 

“A bracelet will work,” Yubel said. She picked up Chiyoko before she could reach Pharaoh. Chiyoko made a face, and for a moment Juudai thought she was going to cry, but then she spotted Ruby flying next to her and reached out her arms. Ruby headbutted her softly and Chiyoko laughed loudly.

 

“Shouldn’t we try it out first? I don’t know if I can actually transfer my powers to anything, and those bracelets are expensive,” Juudai said. Johan nodded, deep in thought. Then he leapt up with a quick, “Hold on,” and disappeared into his bedroom. He returned several minutes later, carrying a small box.

 

“Almost didn’t find it. I haven’t looked at this one in years,” he said, something wistful in his voice. He opened the box and fished out a small golden bracelet like the one he’d suggested Chiyoko wear. It was clearly nowhere near the size of an adult’s wrist.

 

“This was mine. It’s gold, so it might not work as well, but then we’ll know if it works.”

 

Juudai carefully accepted the bracelet. Johan’s name was engraved onto the tag, with his birth date on the other side. He started channeling his powers into the bracelet, then thought better of it and got up.

 

“Be right back.”

 

The place he disappeared to was one he didn’t like spending much time in. There was a space between the twelve dimension, called the Dimensional Crossroads by the few dimensional travelers he’d met. Whenever they crossed over to another dimension, they would pass through the Crossroads, but normally he never spent enough time there to take in the sights. It was a weird place, to say the least. All the dimensions could be seen here, all in their own little sphere, and sometimes, if he looked hard enough, Juudai could almost make out the individual planets and lands. It was unnerving more often than not, but right now, it was ideal for his purposes.

 

He sat down onto thin air and focused on the small piece of jewelry in his hand. It shouldn’t be all that hard, if he just concentrated… It was important. With this, he could keep Chiyoko safe and well-cared for. The thought made him start pouring his power into the gold, until it was glowing and hot to the touch. Only when it started to hurt to keep hold of the metal did he stop. He studied the bracelet critically. It didn’t look much different from before, but he could feel his own power emanating from it. Satisfied, he nodded and reappeared in Johan’s living room.

 

“There, that should do the trick,” he announced, giving the bracelet to Chiyoko to hold and concentrated on halting the flow of power he was using to keep her visible. It was almost second nature by now – his eyes didn’t even change color anymore. 

 

Chiyoko’s image wavered for a second, going slightly see-through, but a moment later she returned to her solid form. She tried to stick the bracelet into her mouth.

 

“Don’t do that,” Yubel admonished gently, pulling her hand away from her mouth. She sniffled.

 

“Seems to have worked. But why couldn’t you do it here?” Johan asked.

 

Instead of replying, Juudai freed the bracelet from Chiyoko’s grasp without reactivating his powers. Then he held it up in front of her. She grabbed it and immediately turned solid again.

 

“I went to a place between dimensions, so right now the bracelet isn’t technically part of this dimension anymore. This way she can pick up the bracelet herself if she loses it.”

 

“And she wouldn’t have been able to if it had been a part of this dimension. She would have just phased right through it,” Johan concluded. Juudai nodded.

 

“I didn’t know if it’d work, but it seems to be fine.”

 

“We’ll have to get her a proper one for herself.” Yubel, eyes glowing faintly, took the bracelet from Chiyoko again. She tossed it at Johan. “Here. That’s yours.”

 

“She can keep it if she wants, you know.”

 

“I’d rather not.”

 

Johan shrugged and gave the bracelet to Ruby, who cheerfully zoomed off with it, forgot she was now solid, and smacked into the doorframe. Juudai smothered a laugh. Bracelet it was, then. It would solve a lot of their problems. Besides, Daitokuji-sensei would probably be delighted to help them pick it out. Juudai might still learn alchemy after all.

 

**oOoOo**

 

Chiyoko was almost a year old when Juudai was rather rudely awoken – not by Chiyoko’s crying, for once, but by an Antique Gear. Juudai opened one eye to see the monster hovering anxiously above him.

 

“Whassit?” he grumbled, turning around and burrowing his head in his pillow. In his mind, he could feel Yubel wake up.

 

“Are you Yuuki Juudai-san?” the monster asked,  gears clicking and whirring loudly. Juudai covered his ears.

 

“Yeah, ‘s me. Can you tone that down a bit? My kid’s asleep.”

 

The whirring grew softer, and the Antique Gear looked abashed. For a machine, it was surprisingly expressive.

 

“Well?” Juudai prompted when it didn’t say anything. “Wait, you’re not one of Chronos-sensei’s monsters right? Is something wrong with him?”

 

“M- My apologies, I do not know of your sensei. I’m sure that any sensei of Yuuki-san is a very strong duelist who does not need my help.”

 

“What are you apologizing for? Look, uh, do you have a name?”

 

“Trahern,” the monster mumbled.

 

Juudai sat up and turned on the light. “Okay, Trahern. What did you come for?”

 

“My home is at war, and I was looking for help and I thought Yuuki-san could help and that I just needed to go to this different world so Different Dimension Warrior helped me and then I came here but I didn’t-”

 

“Whoa, whoa, slow down! Start at the beginning.” Juudai ran a hand through his hair. Trahern bobbed up and down nervously. “You say there’s a war? Where? What happened?”

 

The war was in what Juudai had come to refer to as the ninth dimension, a dimension whose primary inhabitants were warrior clans and machine monsters – and odd combination, but it had always seemed to work. Until now, that was. As Trahern explained, a group of machine monsters, tired of being treated as just pieces of metal to use as construction workers and spare parts, had violently demanded equal rights. In turn, a coalition of warriors had taken out the leaders of the machine group. It had only gotten worse from there.

 

“I was with the machine group, and- and we just wanted peace, you know? And then they started killing us, and I was so scared…”

 

Juudai patted Trahern on what he thought passed for a shoulder.

 

“But then a few of us, they were furious, and they started retaliating. They destroyed entire villages. And some of the warriors kind of wanted to help us, so we teamed up? But now everyone’s fighting each other.”

 

“So let me get this straight. You have a group of warriors who wants to kill the machines, a group of machines who wants to kill the warriors, and a group of both who doesn’t really want to kill anyone?”

 

“Yes, Yuuki-san. I thought you could help… People said you could help.” Trahern sounded dejected. “But I- I understand if you don’t want to. It’s really far away and-”

 

“Trahern, stop that. Of course we’ll help,” Juudai said. Then, as an afterthought, “Oh, and call me Juudai. Seriously.”

 

“Yes, Juudai-san.”

 

Close enough. _Yubel?_

 

Yubel appeared next to him, and Trahern floated backwards nervously. Juudai could safely say that he’d never seen such an expressive – or shy – machine.

 

“You heard what he said, right?”

 

Yubel nodded. “What do we do with Chiyoko?”

 

“We can’t take her.” That was one thing that had been absolutely clear from the start. If it involved short trips that weren’t dangerous, they sometimes took her along, but this sounded like it could take a lot of time, and it was by no means safe.

 

“Your parents?”

 

Juudai hesitated. Chiyoko had, on a few rare occasions, managed to take off her bracelet. It was no problem as long as they were around, but if it was just his parents, they’d never be able to find her again.

 

“Mama and Papa aren’t going to like it, but I’d prefer to leave her with someone who can see her regardless.”

 

“You mean Johan.”

 

Juudai gave an embarrassed shrug. “Well, Manjoume doesn’t want to, and Hayato’s really busy with work right now, so yeah.”

 

“I didn’t know Juudai-san had a child,” Trahern said softly.

 

“She’s still a baby.” Juudai looked at the clock. Four in the morning. “Can you give us a day or two to get everything settled? Then we’ll come with you.”

 

“Yes, of course. Thank you very much, Juudai-san!”

 

Juudai spent about half a day convincing his parents that it’d be safer for Chiyoko to stay with Johan. In the end, he only got them to agree by promising that Johan would contact them regularly. Johan didn’t have much of a problem with it. At the last minute they also decided to leave Pharaoh with him. Chiyoko loved the cat, and Juudai didn’t like taking him into a warzone anyway. Daitokuji-sensei protested, but his knowledge would be of little use in what Trahern described as a highly technological world. It was with great reluctance that he agreed to stay behind.

 

“Do you know when you will be back, Juudai-kun?” he asked, as Johan carefully took Chiyoko from Juudai. Juudai shook his head.

 

“No idea. We’ll try to keep in touch, but no guarantees.” He kissed Chiyoko on the forehead. “We’ll be back soon, sweetie. Be nice now, okay?”

 

“You take care of her,” Yubel told Johan. Johan looked her straight in the eyes.

 

“Of course I will.”

 

“Alright then.” Juudai ruffled Chiyoko’s hair with a heavy heart. It would be the first time they’d really be away for what could end up being several weeks. “Trahern, you coming along?”

 

“Yes, Juudai-san.”

 

“Then let’s go.”

 

**oOoOo**

There were certain dimensions Juudai visited more often than others. Earth was one, of course, and the Dark World was another. On the flipside, some worlds he only visited when a call for help came. The ninth dimension was one of those.

 

Right now, looking at the ruins of what once must have been a large and prosperous village, he deeply regretted it. According to Trahern, this war had been going on for over a year, and Juudai hadn’t known about it.

 

“They were fine when I left,” Trahern was muttering, gears spinning anxiously. “I don’t know what happened. The village was still fine last week. If I hadn’t left, then-”

 

“You would’ve been dead,” said Yubel, unforgiving. Trahern flinched. “What would you have done? One monster against an army? Don’t fool yourself.”

 

Juudai didn’t disagree, but, “Yubel…”

 

“No… No. Yubel-san is right.” If anything, Trahern looked even more dejected than before. “I’m a weak monster. I wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

 

“C’mon, we’ll find a way to solve this mess.” Juudai patted the large central gear. “Do you have friends around here? We’ll need to find out what happened.”

 

As it turned out, and to Trahern’s great joy, the majority of the village had been able to evacuate. They were met by the Different Dimension Warrior who had been the one to send Trahern to Juudai. He introduced himself as Leon and guided them to a large underground facility – one of many, according to him.

 

“Of course, everyone has facilities like these,” he said, running a hand through his bright red hair. He passed Juudai a handheld device. “You have a laptop, right? Sync it with this. Everything you need to know is on there.”

 

Juudai obediently took out his laptop. “How do you even know it’s compatible with my laptop?”

 

Leon grinned. “Seriously? We’re dimensional travelers. That thing is compatible with pretty much anything advanced enough across all dimensions. And guys like Trahern here have developed amazing things.”

 

“Mr. Leon, I never did much,” Trahern said.

 

“And you always say that. Give yourself some more credit!”

 

“Do you Different Dimension monsters always live here?” Yubel asked. Juudai looked up sharply.

 

“Like I said, we’re travelers. But most of us tend to meet up here, yeah. Before this war started, we had a bit of a group here.” Leon sighed. “Not anymore, though. A lot of us died, and those who survived… Most hightailed it out of here.”

 

_Are you really thinking…_

_Do you still have that photo with you, Juudai?_

Juudai fished around in his backpack until he found the picture of Chiyoko’s parents. It was a bit bent around the edges now, from being hidden away in his backpack for so long. It had been months since he’d looked at it.

 

“Do you know these people?” he asked Leon, pulling him to the side. Leon studied the picture closely.

 

“Ah… Yes. Not very well, but I knew them through friends. Alexander and Cassia. I never got to meet their kid.”

 

“Are they… Are they still alive?” Juudai asked. He wondered if Leon could hear the slight tremble of his voice.

 

“Cassia’s dead. One of the worst attacks was on their town, and we found her body when we went looking for survivors. Alexander’s brother was a good friend of mine. He survived that attack. Told us what happened.”

 

“And Alexander?”

 

Leon shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. According to his brother, they’d all been planning to leave this world when the attack hit, so he took the kid and fled.” He hesitated for a second. “From what I heard… He was badly wounded. I doubt he made it very far.”

 

Juudai clamped down viciously on the bright flash of relief, suddenly disgusted with himself. But the idea of having to give up Chiyoko after taking care of her for all those months was not something he wanted to consider.

 

“Where is the man’s brother now?” Yubel asked. Juudai could feel her unease. It mirrored his own.

 

“He died two weeks ago,” Leon all but snapped. Sore topic, apparently. “Their entire family is gone now. Why are you so interested anyway? Where’d you get that picture?”

 

“We found it in the Dark World.” Juudai hesitated for a second, then decided he might as well be honest. “Together with the baby.”

 

Leon’s face was carefully blank. “That so? What did you do with her?”

 

Juudai knew a test when he saw one. Even so, he didn’t know if his answer would be deemed right.

 

“We took her with us. She was all alone, and no one came for her, so we didn’t want to leave her behind.”

 

Leon nodded, but he still didn’t look satisfied. “Where is she now?”

 

“At home. We, uh, adopted her.”

 

“I see.” Whatever else Leon was going to say was interrupted when Trahern appeared near Juudai’s shoulder, clearly not happy to interrupt the conversation.

 

“Mr. Leon, there’s some trouble in the gamma sector,”  he said softly. Leon’s demeanor changed entirely. He gave Trahern a distracted grin and headed off to another part of the facility, looking over his shoulder as he went.

 

“We’ll talk,” he mouthed at Juudai and Yubel. Juudai nodded, but he wasn’t looking forward to it. Chiyoko’s family was dead. He really didn’t want to feel happy about it.

 

_Don’t beat yourself up over it. We didn’t kill them._

Yubel was staring straight ahead, probably thinking exactly what Juudai was thinking. Juudai nodded, but her words didn’t stop the queasy feeling in his stomach. In search of a distraction, he headed back to where he’d left his laptop. It had finished syncing, so he sat down and started scrolling to the long list of files, opening whatever looked interesting to him. He frowned a bit when he read over a history file that was suspiciously vague.

 

“Trahern?” he called softly. Trahern came over immediately. “You were with the machines when this started, right? I mean-” he gestured vaguely at Trahern’s overall machine-ness.

 

“Yes, Juudai-san.”

 

“What happened? This file just gives me facts and dates. I need motivations. You said you guys wanted equal rights.”

 

“Yes… As a machine, we didn’t have much choice but to work in a factory or invent things. Some of us do other things, but for most of us… That’s what we do. I like it,” he hastened to add. “I mean, I like making things, but sometimes it’s dangerous. The machines in Juudai-san’s world are dead things, but we aren’t. If we get ripped apart, they can put us back together, but we’d still be dead.”

 

“So it wasn’t safe to work?” Juudai asked. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? He’d want better working conditions too.

 

“Sometimes it wasn’t very safe…” Trahern hesitated, “but that wasn’t really the problem. I mean, we made all the equipment and machinery ourselves. As long as it was within our budget, it was fine.”

 

Yubel joined them. “Then what was the problem?”

 

“The problem was that we were shortsighted idiots,” Leon said, appearing behind them. Trahern jumped slightly. “False alarm. Gamma sector’s fine.”

 

“Mr. Leon, that’s not true… I’m sure you did your best.”

 

“If there was money, it usually went to the warrior clans. They were the ones with the most influence, and of course the most infighting. So they employed a lot of machine monsters like Trahern here to come up with newer, better things. Anything to get ahead of other clans. You should’ve seen the ninja and the samurai clans.” Leon smiled grimly. “Us Different Dimension monsters, we stayed out of it for the most part. We liked traveling too much to stay in one place for long.

 

“But anyway, so the money that went to the machines often wasn’t enough, and all the clans just told them to come up with a solution for our problems, without caring whether they liked doing that or if they had the resources to do so.”

 

“I liked doing so,” Trahern said softly. Leon smiled.

 

“Yeah, you, but you’re some kind of genius with gadgets.” He bent towards Juudai and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Seriously, that handheld I gave you earlier? We tracked down all the different versions in other worlds, but Trahern was one of the guys who actually made sure that everything’s compatible.”

 

“My hands aren’t very useful. I can’t do much.”

 

“And still you made some awesome things.” He patted Trahern on the head. “Anyway, so we didn’t even really notice that we weren’t treating the machines very fairly. It came to a head about a year ago. A few machines started demanding more material to work with, more freedom to do what they wanted. At first we thought it’d pass. The big clans made a few minor concessions, but nothing substantial.”

 

“And that wasn’t enough,” Yubel concluded.

 

“Nope. Not by any objective standards, really. Things got out of hand after that. When some people started making too much of a fuss, they were taken out. You can see where that got us.” Leon made a grand sweeping gesture. “Most people don’t want to fight. It’s the fringe groups that do the most damage.”

 

At this, he sighed sadly. “You know, sometimes I think I kind of understand them. Sure, you’ve got the ones who are just in it for the fighting and the violence, but a lot of them are people who lost their children, or their partners or friends…”

 

Revenge. Juudai could understand that, even if he wished they hadn’t taken this route.

 

“Has no one ever tried to sit everyone down and come to a compromise?” he asked. “Make a treaty?”

 

“Of course we have. Didn’t work; everyone got accused of nepotism and the mediators were never impartial enough. That’s why Trahern thought we could use someone like you.”

 

Juudai nodded. Time to stop this war. It might be too late for Chiyoko’s parents, but it was the very least he could do.

 

**oOoOo**

The situation was both better and worse than Juudai had feared. On the one hand, as Leon had explained, the group that wanted to resolve the conflict was by far the biggest group and growing every day. On the other hand, the two other groups were coming to blows more and more often, each confrontation more violent than the previous one, and the victims caught in the crossfire were too numerous to count. Juudai tried his best to stop the worst, and his presence was slowly contributing to the growing number of people on their side, but it also made him a target. He had been trying to get in touch with the leaders of both groups, so far with little success.

 

Almost three weeks after dropping of Chiyoko at Johan’s, Juudai was working his way through the ruins of a collapsed underground facility, looking for any survivors and wondering absently whether they could afford to just go back home quickly and check up on Chiyoko. Not that he didn’t trust Johan, but he missed his daughter. He knew Yubel felt the same way.

 

“Anything on your side?” he called, more for the benefit of the other people around him than for Yubel. Telepathy was by no means a foreign concept here, but it still tended to freak people out.

 

“Nothing,” Yubel replied. She strayed a bit further away from him, joining Trahern in his search for salvageable material. Juudai had seen Trahern construct state-of-the-art equipment out of just a few pieces of metal and some wiring. Too bad the monster was horrible at accepting compliments.

 

He reached the corner of what had once been the main research room. Any people here had probably been crushed to death when the ceiling fell. He half-heartedly kicked at a stone. It didn’t budge.

 

He turned around. Then his body jerked, twisted around of its own accord, just in time to avoid the knife that hit the rock behind him with a hard clang. Juudai stumbled and fell, catching a glimpse of someone – a woman? – in the air above him before his own darkness took over, wrapping around his attacker until she screamed, a low, terrible noise that sounded nothing like a person and yet cut right through him, and he could only watch, horrified, as his own powers went out of control, crushing and crushing until there was the sound of breaking wood and breaking metal and then nothing but splinters.

 

Yubel was by his side in an instant, wings fully extended and expression vicious, but his attacker had been reduced to a just few metal shards.

 

“She was just there- I- Didn’t see her coming- I-”

 

Yubel wrapped her arms around him, and he shut his eyes tightly, trying not to remember how she’d screamed, how her body had been crushed by his own powers, powers he’d sworn never to use for killing again.

 

“Juudai, it’s okay,” Yubel shushed. “You didn’t see her coming. _I_ didn’t even see her coming.”

 

“I should’ve been able to control myself-”

 

“Juudai-san, are you okay?” Trahern asked tremulously. Juudai heard him inch carefully around the remains of the fallen warrior. Selene, a young woman with long, blonde hair who was responsible for the guard detail when they went on expeditions like this one, was right behind him.

 

“Please tell me what happened,” she asked.

 

Juudai slowly opened his eyes, but he made no effort to free himself from Yubel’s embrace. He felt her arms tighten slightly around him.

 

“I was attacked. I- I didn’t see who it was. A woman, I think, like a ninja, but,” he stared at a piece of bent metal that had landed near his foot, “a machine. It doesn’t make sense-”

 

Selene studied the surroundings. “Ninja, you said?”

 

“To sneak up on us, she must have been,” said Yubel. Selene nodded.

 

“Karakuri.”

 

The name wasn’t familiar to Juudai, but Trahern twitched in recognition.

 

“They’re machines…” he explained softly, “but they’re ninjas too. They haven’t been here for very long.”

 

“New families and clans often arrive out of nowhere. The Karakuri sided with the machines. They do a lot of damage,” Selene said. “You know, it might have been a good thing that you-”

 

A fierce glare from Yubel shut her up.

 

“It’s not your fault. You reacted instinctively.”

 

“I lost control. If I lose control just because someone surprises me, what will happen if someone makes me angry? What will happen if-” Juudai didn’t finish the sentence. He knew exactly what would happen. It already had.

 

“This situation is nothing like that,” Yubel said sternly. “You can control yourself. Don’t ever doubt that.”

 

“I didn’t just kill her, I destroyed her. Just look! There’s nothing left!” Juudai closed his eyes again. “And this was nothing, just another attack. I’m supposed to be here to stop this war, not to kill even more people.”

 

 “Would you rather she’d killed you?” Selene said.

 

“That’s not…” Juudai tried to find the right words. “Selene, that’s not how it works for me. She wouldn’t have killed me. I could have easily stopped her from attacking, restrain her, something! No one should have died.”

 

“Collateral damage.”

 

Juudai rounded on her. “People should not be dying!”

 

“Should not, would not, … All that matters is that it did, and that it’s going to happen again unless this stupid war ends.” Selene did not look particularly intimidated. “I’m not going to be sad that she’s dead, Juudai.”

 

“You’re no better than them,” he spat.

 

“Maybe I’m not, no. If you want unambiguous good guys, then go read a fairytale. I deal in facts, and the facts tell me that we’re far better off without another assassin waiting to stab us in the back. You might be able to survive, but I don’t want to lose any of my people if I can help it.”

Juudai walked away. He’d had it with this place. He just wanted to go home and pick up Chiyoko and stay put, just for now. It was the first time in a while since he’d felt this urge. It was also the first time since he was seventeen that he’d outright killed a person.

 

_Juudai!_

_You think she’s right, don’t you? Selene?_

Yubel took several seconds to reply, which told Juudai everything he needed to know.

 

_It’s a war and she’s practical. I don’t disagree._

Juudai didn’t reply. He really didn’t want to agree.

 

_This needs to end. Soon._

“Yes,” Juudai said out loud. “I think I’m going to talk to some people.”

 

 _And,_ he thought, _they’re going to listen, whether they like it or not._

**oOoOo**

 

Leading the more strategy-oriented branch of the machine group was a member of the Antique Gear family, like Trahern. He was not, however, an Antique Gear Golem, as Juudai had expected, but an Antique Gear Knight named Einion. Trahern refused to confirm whether they were related or not, but the pointed silence that fell every time Juudai brought up the subject made him think they were.

 

“So I meet with those bastards, and then what?” Einion growled. He’d reluctantly agreed to talk once he realized that Juudai was not going to leave and wouldn’t be stopped by him or any of his allies. Maybe the golden eyes and aura of darkness were overkill. Juudai couldn’t bring himself to care. Now he and Einion were on their third iteration of the same conversation, and frankly, he was getting annoyed.

 

“We come to a compromise and people stop dying.”

 

Einion actually laughed. “And you’re going to accomplish that? An outsider, who knows nothing about us or the way we live? If you’re so good, where were you a year ago?”

 

“I’m only here as a mediator. That’s my job.”

 

“What if I refuse?  Are you just going to drag me out and force me to come with you?”

 

“If necessary.” Juudai kept his face impassive. Behind him, Yubel leaned on his shoulder, flexing her claws.

 

“You know, I’ve heard some interesting things about you. Your soul isn’t very pure either, is it? The Gentle Darkness isn’t all that gentle.”

 

Yubel’s hand found his shoulder and squeezed once.

 

 _Stay calm_.

 

“That is irrelevant. Will you agree to a treaty or not?”

 

“What’s in it for me?”

 

Juudai raised an eyebrow. “I thought that would be obvious. Peace. Better living conditions. Equality.”

 

“Why should I trust _them_ to keep their word?”

 

“Because I’ll be there. I’ve said so before.” Juudai sighed. This was why he preferred helping out people in small ways, without them noticing. If the warriors were going to be as stubborn as Einion, he might as well make good on his promise and just drag them all in one room and lock them up.

 

As it turned out, the warriors weren’t as stubborn. They were worse.

 

“I have absolutely no intention of ever meeting with any of them, unless I get to kill them,” Alida snapped. She was a Tactical Warrior, and Juudai’s first thought upon meeting her had beenthat she reminded him of Asuka. He’d revised his opinion within two minutes. Asuka would never be this bitter, or this cruel.

 

He slammed his hands down on the table. “My daughter’s parents were warriors like you, and they were killed in this war. And I really don’t fancy telling her that you all murdered each other because you couldn’t stop hating each other for two friggin’ seconds!”

 

“Your daughter is still alive!” Alida shouted. “You do not get to tell me not to hate the people who killed my own children in front of me! I don’t care who you are or what you can do!”

 

“So your idea of a solution is to kill other people’s children in front of them? Wow, I’m sure your children would be glad to hear that.”

 

For a moment Juudai thought Alida was going to hit him. Then her demeanor changed completely.

 

“It seems you still have a lot to learn about being a parent, Herald,” she said, voice cold enough to chill Juudai to the bone. “And I hope one day a stranger tells you that he knows your child better than you do. Just so you know how it feels.”

 

Juudai thought of Chiyoko, and the picture still in his backpack. “I apologize. I was out of line.”

 

“Yes. You were.”

 

“I’m not asking you to become best friends, but people are dying every day, and most of them never wanted any of this.”

 

Alida raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think I’ve never thought of that? We’re too far in to stop now. It’s too complicated.”

 

She was not going to like him for saying it, but… “That’s a coward’s excuse.”

 

“What would you know?”

 

“More than you think.” Juudai briefly touched his deck holder, with Super Fusion still inside. “I thought the same thing, once. And so even when I’d reached my goal, I kept going and going, and I hurt far too many people in the process.”

 

Alida sat down at the table, not looking at him, but instead staring at a blank spot on the wall behind his head. “What are you going to do if your treaty plan doesn’t work, Herald?” she asked.

 

“Revise it. Try again and again until everyone can come to an agreement.”

 

He didn’t mention that any such agreement might very well involve putting Alida herself on trial. She was a tactician, after all; she was probably perfectly aware of it.

 

“It’s not that I don’t want an end to this,” Alida said. “But if you think that we can live here peacefully after everything that’s happened, you’re just being naïve. If it were up to me, they’d all just be spare parts by now.”

 

“Yeah, you’ve said.” Juudai waved a hand dismissively. “Will you consider it?”

 

“Can you guarantee that the culprits will be brought to justice?”

 

“The worst offenders on both sides,” he stressed that last part, “will probably be tried.”

 

“I’ll consider it.” Alida got up from behind the table again. “Now get the hell out of here.”

 

**oOoOo**

 

_What do you think?_

Juudai glanced briefly at Yubel, before concentrating on the argument that Einion and one of Alida’s superiors were having. It didn’t look like it was escalating yet, but he was prepared to intervene when it did.

 

_This might take a while._

It had taken a week and a lot of running around before everyone had managed to agree on a meeting place, an abandoned building that had been around for so long that no one quite remembered whom it had belonged to originally. Leon and his team had worked tirelessly to restore it and equip it with all the technology they needed. Even so, the large room they were using for the purpose of these meetings still felt far older than any of the buildings and facilities Juudai had seen so far. Maybe it’d inspire some respect.

 

 With twenty people for each faction, the room was too crowded for Juudai’s liking, but it had been one of the conditions for this meeting to take place at all. He was quite sure that both the machines and the warriors had troops waiting near the building, ready to attack the moment something went wrong. That was why he’d shielded the entire area the moment everyone was inside. Selene was on the outside, ready to divert anyone who got too close. He hoped it would be enough.

 

Einion was demanding the extradition of several people. As Juudai had expected, Alida was on the list. He found her sitting in the audience, stony-faced as she watched the proceedings.

 

“You’ve murdered our friends and our families. Do you really expect us to let you get away with it?” Einion was saying.  His opponent snorted.

 

“Why not? You expect us to let you get away with it.”

 

Three hours in. Juudai slumped down next to Trahern, who was following the debate with an unusual fervor.

 

“You’re related to Einion, aren’t you?” he whispered.

 

Trahern nodded, not looking away from Einion. “He’s my cousin. We were never very close.”

 

“But he’s family,” Juudai finished for him. Trahern nodded again.

 

“I know he’s done terrible things. I just wish…” he shook his head. “Ah, it doesn’t really matter, does it? We need this treaty.”

 

Juudai looked away. No use in disputing it. Most of the people in this room would probably end up being tried in some form. The fact that they all knew this and had still shown up was a good sign.

 

“So you can continue killing our children?!” someone in the audience shouted, and the conversation suddenly devolved into harsh accusations being shouted from all sides. Juudai started and quickly got up.

 

“Hey!” he shouted. The room slowly quieted down. Juudai waited until all attention was on him before continuing.“Look, I- I know what it’s like to be a parent, and I know that most of you would gladly kill anyone who so much as dared to hurt your children. I think it’s the same for many parents.”

 

A few people in the audience nodded.

 

“And I can’t blame anyone for wanting to avenge their loved ones. But this isn’t the solution. Hate only creates hate. I don’t think I need to tell you that.”

 

“Do you even have any idea what it’s like?” someone shouted in the back.

 

“All too well,” he muttered, then said, louder, “You’ll feel relieved at first, but then the guilt sets in: Maybe you just killed someone who didn’t even have anything to do with it. Maybe their loved ones will want revenge too. Maybe you start thinking that your child, or partner, or brother or sister wouldn’t have wanted this.”

 

“How do you know what they would have wanted?” Another voice, a woman this time, shouted. Juudai acknowledged her with a nod. He’d learned his lesson from Alida this time.

 

“I don’t. Maybe you’re right and they would have wanted you to take revenge. And then maybe the next time someone else comes for you.”

 

“We’re willing to take that risk.” Alida. Of course she’d say that.

 

“But I’m not.” He swallowed. “Look, it’s only been a year. You can’t tell me that none of you ever had a friend on the other side. You can’t tell me that no one has friends and family in Leon’s group.” He gestured at Leon, who was sitting in the front row.

 

A few people nodded, almost unwillingly. He saw Einion look at Trahern.

 

“Okay? I’m pretty sure you can still find your friends again.” He breathed in deeply. “Okay, continue. The floor is all yours.”

 

He walked back over to Yubel and leaned against her. “I want a break,” he muttered.

 

She ran a hand through his hair. “You’re doing fine. It won’t be much longer. Then we can go home.”

 

 _To Chiyoko,_ she didn’t say. She didn’t need to. Juudai sighed and leaned into her touch, closing his eyes for a second. Almost there. If only they’d listen to each other.

 

They didn’t reach an agreement that day, even though the negotiations went on well into the night. Nor did they reach one the next day. The third day brought the promise of progress with it, when a few people on the three sides proved willing to form a subcommittee to draft an outline of rights for every inhabitant of the dimension. Trahern was on the committee, and for the next two days, Juudai saw hide nor hair from him.

 

Day five was the first day Juudai really counted as a success. The committee came forward with a first draft, and the discussions proceeded with minimal shouting.

 

_It’s almost as if they can be civilized._

Yubel grinned wryly. _You’re optimistic, aren’t you?_

But as it turned out, he had reason to be. Day nine saw the final version of the rights bill approved by all sides. It had been rushed, Juudai knew, and it would probably go through a lot more changes, but it seemed like the end was in sight.

 

And then, over six weeks after Juudai and Yubel had left earth, everyone finally, _finally_ came to an agreement. It was provisional, and there was a lot of work to be done, but everyone had signed and agreed, and as far as Juudai could see, hostilities had been ceased except for a few small scuffles here and there.

 

“You’ll need to come back,” Leon said on their final night. “You know that, right? There’s a lot more work to be done.”

 

“We know. If you need us, you can send Trahern.”

 

“I think he’s going to be pretty busy in the near future.” Leon grinned. Trahern had been appointed vice-president of what had been termed the Committee for Technological Restoration, much to his embarrassment. “I guess I’ll just have to come myself.”

 

Juudai sobered. “About Chiyoko-”

 

“Don’t worry about it, okay?” Leon clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve heard you two talk about her, and I’m glad you’re taking care of her. I didn’t know Alexander and Cassia very well, but they didn’t want her to grow up here.”

 

“Thank you,” Yubel said.

 

“You should come visit,” Juudai told him. Leon nodded.

 

“I think I’d like that. Someone’s got to teach her how to cross dimensions anyway.”

 

Leon laughed loudly at Juudai and Yubel’s horrified expressions. “Don’t worry. I’ll wait until she’s old enough. Is five okay with you guys?”

 

 


	3. Ghosts in the Attic

Chiyoko was hiding.

Onkel Johan had a lot of trees in his garden, and Chiyoko liked to climb to the highest branch she could reach, like she sometimes saw Pharaoh do. She'd fallen down once, and Onkel Johan had been very angry, but the next day Tante Amethyst had shown her how to climb, and how to hide, and how to land safely if she fell.

"You're not a cat," she'd said, "so you can't land like a cat. Do you understand that?"

Chiyoko had nodded and watched as Tante Amethyst had effortlessly climbed a tree. Then she'd practiced every day, until she could jump and land without hurting herself every time. Onkel Johan had never found out, and neither had Juudai and Yubel. Chiyoko smiled. Kumazawa-sensei wouldn't find her here. She could hide all day long and not have to go inside and sit still and learn words. School was boring.

She climbed to a higher branch, the bark rough and familiar under her hands, and looked out over the schoolyard. All the children in her class were gone now. She didn't like them anyway. They couldn't even see Yubel and they kept calling Juudai weird, and then Kumazawa-sensei would tell her to call Juudai dad, but that was really stupid because all the other kids said dad, and Juudai and Yubel were Juudai and Yubel. The other kids were stupid and they couldn't climb trees like she could and their parents were boring, so her family was much better than them.

Chiyoko tugged at the silver bracelet around her left wrist. Juudai and Yubel and even Onkel Johan had told her to never take it off, but it kept getting stuck on the tree bark and she couldn't climb like that. She fiddled with the clasp, frowning when it wouldn't come off and she couldn't twist her hand the right way. It had to come off! She couldn't play if it kept getting stuck and if she couldn't play, she'd be bored all day and it'd all be because of the bracelet.

"Aha!" she said happily as she finally managed to undo the clasp, but when she wanted to put it in her pocket, she overbalanced and slipped, only barely managing to grab hold of the tree trunk. The bracelet fell. Chiyoko suddenly felt kind of strange. She looked down. She would have to get her bracelet again and then climb back up before anyone could see her, because Juudai and Yubel would be very angry if they knew she'd taken it off, and she didn't want them to be angry.

"Chiyoko-chan!"

Kumazawa-sensei! Chiyoko pulled back and hid against the tree trunk. Now she'd never get her bracelet back and Kumazawa-sensei was definitely going to find her and then she'd tell Juudai and-

"Chiyoko-chan, where are you?" Kumazawa-sensei shouted, crossing the playground until she was standing right underneath Chiyoko's tree. The wind tugged at her long, black hair, and she tucked it behind her ears impatiently, looking down as she did so. Chiyoko could only watch as Kumazawa-sensei spotted her bracelet and picked it up, her eyes going wide and panicky. She looked up at the tree, her eyes meeting Chiyoko's for a second-

\- and ran back inside.

Weird. Chiyoko climbed down to the lowest branch, still feeling strange. It was as if she weighed nothing at all. She jumped like Tante Amethyst had taught her, landing on her hands and feet, and she didn't even feel the shock that she always felt. But she had to get her bracelet back! And now Kumazawa-sensei had it and she couldn't let Kumazawa-sensei find her!

It took her a long time to cross the playground, and once or twice she was sure a teacher or kid saw her, but they all seemed to look right through her. She'd almost reached the school building when the main gate opened again and Juudai walked through, followed by a visibly agitated Kumazawa-sensei. Chiyoko hid behind a bench.

"Yuuki-san, I am terribly sorry! We found her bracelet, but Chiyoko is gone! I searched the entire playground! Oh, I should've called the police..."

Was Kumazawa-san crying? Chiyoko peeked from behind the bench, and quickly hid again when Juudai looked her way. His gaze lingered for several seconds.

"We'll find her." he said, still not looking away from the bench. Chiyoko shrank down. "Don't worry, Kumazawa-san, I'm sure she's still around. Do you mind if I take her bracelet?"

"No, no, of course not!" Kumazawa-sensei almost dropped the bracelet before Juudai could take it. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I-"

"Why don't you look inside again?" said Juudai, taking her arm and turning her towards the school building. "I'll look outside. She can't have gone far."

"Yes, of course, Yuuki-san!" Kumazawa-sensei hurried inside, leaving Juudai alone on the playground. He walked towards the bench Chiyoko was hiding behind and sat down.

"Chiyoko, come here, will you?" he said, not looking at her. Chiyoko wrapped her arms around her knees. "I'm counting to three," Juudai said again. He didn't sound angry, but he was going to be angry! She shouldn't have lost her bracelet!

"One..." Juudai said slowly. Chiyoko shook her head.

"Two..."

She scampered from under the bench. Juudai patted the spot next to him, and Chiyoko carefully pulled herself up.

"Give me your hand."

Without waiting for a reply, he took her left hand and put her bracelet back on. Immediately, the strange feeling disappeared. Chiyoko pulled up her knees and hugged them.

"What did we tell you about that bracelet, Chiyoko?"

"I-" She sniffed. "I dun' wanna take it off, but I was in the tree, an' it got stuck and-"

Juudai sighed and muttered, "Gonna have to talk to Johan about that," but he didn't sound very angry. He put a hand on Chiyoko's head and ruffled her hair. She slowly looked up.

"Juudai?"

"Yeah?"

"Kumazawa-sensei didn't find me?"

Juudai leaned back and crossed his legs. "Ah. That's why you have to keep your bracelet on, Chiyoko."

"Why?"

"Do you know how your uncle Johan can see Yubel, but grandpa and grandma can't?"

Chiyoko nodded. Sometimes, when she and Onkel Johan and everyone else went to the park, people would only see her and Onkel Johan, but not Onkel Sapphire or Tante Amethyst or anyone else even when they were right there. And the kids at school all thought Juudai was her only parent, as if they couldn't even see Yubel.

"You're a bit different from the other kids, Chiyoko," Juudai said softly. "Without your bracelet, only Yubel and I and uncle Johan can see you. That's why you have to wear it."

"No one'll see me?" she asked. Juudai laughed and ruffled her hair again.

"Don't even think about it, kiddo. You still have to go to school and you're not allowed to hide."

"Yuuki-san!" Kumazawa-sensei came running out of the main gate again. "I looked everywhere, but I can't find her- Oh!"

She froze when she saw Chiyoko. Juudai smiled widely at her.

"I found her in the school garden. She'd gotten lost. I apologize, Kumazawa-san, I should've come to find you."

"No, no, it's fine, Yuuki-san!" Kumazawa-sensei said. She frowned. "I could've sworn I'd looked there..."

"She was very well hidden." Juudai jumped up and lifted Chiyoko from the bench. "Rest assured, I'll have a word with her when we get home. That is," he looked at his wrist, even though he wasn't wearing a watch, "if you wouldn't mind me taking her home? It's getting a bit late, and I'm sure we all need time to cool down."

" _Haven't you gotten good at negotiating?"_ Yubel said, suddenly appearing right behind them. Chiyoko looked down again, but like Juudai, she didn't look angry. Chiyoko glanced at Kumazawa-sensei, who didn't even look at Yubel.

"Hush, you," Juudai whispered. He grinned at Kumazawa-sensei. "I know it's not standard protocol, but she's a bit upset. She'd only be making her friends upset too."

"Oh, right, yes, of course!" Kumazawa-sensei rambled. Yubel shook her head.

" _Are you sure this woman is competent, Juudai?"_

"She tries," Juudai muttered. "Now, Kumazawa-san, I believe you have your kids to get back to?"

"Yes, of course. Akiyama-sensei is watching over them, but I should really go back..." She held out a hand for Juudai to shake. "I am sorry for causing you so much trouble, Yuuki-san."

"It's no problem." He shifted his grip on Chiyoko and shook her teacher's hand. "Chiyoko, what are you going to say?"

"Sorry, Kumazawa-sensei," Chiyoko mumbled.

" _Louder, Chiyoko."_

"I'm sorry, Kumazawa-sensei," Chiyoko said again, louder this time. Yubel nodded.

"Yes, yes, it's quite alright..." Kumazawa-sensei said. "I'll see you tomorrow, Chiyoko-chan. No more running away!"

She followed them to the exit, but once they left the school, she was gone again. Yubel didn't look happy.

" _Really, Juudai, we have to trust that woman?"_

"She was pretty upset. She was convinced that Chiyoko had been kidnapped."

" _Who'd want-"_ But Yubel abruptly stopped talking. Juudai's step faltered.

"No one, let's hope," he said at long last. Chiyoko looked between the two of them. Something had changed. But Juudai and Yubel couldn't be scared, could they? They were never scared!

"Keep your bracelet on in the future, Chiyoko," Juudai said. "Now come on, let's go home."

Neither he nor Yubel talked to her about the bracelet again, but later that day Chiyoko overheard Juudai talking to Onkel Johan on the computer. They were talking about trees, but they were also talking about kings and people who didn't like Juudai. Why would people not like Juudai?

"We'll look after her, Juudai," she heard Onkel Johan say, his voice tinny and far away. "All of us. Nothing will happen."

Chiyoko thought he didn't sound very sure. But maybe it was just the computer.

**oOoOo**

"You win," Juudai said, smiling as he moved Elemental Hero Necro Darkman to the graveyard and put down his remaining cards. Chiyoko frowned down at the field. She'd won, and she'd been able to use the effect of her own Warrior of the Sun, but... But...

"You let me win," she said accusingly.

"No, I didn't." Juudai gave her his best smile. She didn't buy it for a second.

"Yes, you did! 'Cuz..." she stared at the field. "'Cuz you never summon Necro Darkman, but now you played him anyway!"

"But I had no other monsters!" Juudai complained.

"An'... An' you played him when Warrior of the Sun was already there and then you left him in attack mode! That's stupid!"

"Aww, can't I make a mistake sometimes?"

"No, you can't!" Chiyoko pushed her chair back and ran away from the table. Stupid, stupid! She knew she wasn't as good at dueling as Juudai or Yubel or Onkel Johan or everyone else, but that didn't mean they all had to go easy on her and let her win all the time! She stormed to her room and slammed the door behind her. Pharaoh, asleep on her bed, woke up with a startled sound, but she paid him no heed. Instead she let herself fall down on the bed. She hadn't even been alone for a minute when there was a knock on her door.

"Chiyoko, can I come in?"

Yubel, not Juudai, as she'd expected. "Go away!" she shouted, burrowing her head in her pillow. Pharaoh jumped off the bed and started scratching at the door.

"I'm coming in."

The door didn't open, but Yubel was suddenly next to her anyway. Chiyoko didn't want to look at her.

"Go 'way," she muttered again. Yubel sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Don't you like dueling?"

She shook her head. "Juudai lets me win and I'm bad at it and I'm never gonna be as good as you anyway so I don't  _care_!" She shouted the last word in her pillow.

"You saw that Juudai was letting you win, didn't you?"

"So what?" she said, turning her head towards the wall so she didn't have to look at Yubel.

"So that means you're pretty good. You could tell him what he'd done wrong," Yubel said matter-of-factly.

"Not true," Chiyoko muttered. "Don't wanna talk about it."

Yubel sighed and ran a hand through her curls. "This isn't just about dueling, is it?"

Chiyoko remained stubbornly silent.

"Did something happen at school?"

She shook her head.

"What happened, Chiyoko?"

Chiyoko turned around and stared at the ceiling. "Is it true that you're not my real parents?"

Yubel stilled. "Who said that?" she asked, something dangerous in her voice.

"There was this kid at school, and he said Juudai couldn't be my dad because I don't look like him, and-" And she didn't look like Yubel either, and the teachers at school didn't even know Yubel, and if she took off her bracelet she disappeared but no one else did, and...

"Oh, Chiyoko..." Yubel fell into the kind of silence that meant she was talking to Juudai. Just a minute later, Juudai himself appeared in the doorway, a picture frame in his hands. He didn't even ask what happened, but sat down on the other side of her bed and addressed Pharaoh.

"Sensei, would you mind leaving us alone for a little bit?"

Pharaoh mewled softly and left the room. Chiyoko watched him go.

"Who 'm I really?"

"You're our daughter, Chiyoko," Yubel said. "You'll always be our daughter."

"I don't look like you and I go away when I don't have my bracelet and none of the other kids do."

Sighing, Juudai toyed with the picture frame. "Do you know what adoption means?" he asked. Chiyoko thought. The kids in her class had used the word, and then the teacher of one of the higher grades had overheard, and he'd said it wasn't a bad thing, but everyone'd been so mean about it...

"It means... It means your parents aren't your parents. But you said you were!"

"We are," Juudai confirmed. "But we're not your only parents." He showed her the picture frame. There was a man, and a woman, and they were holding a baby, but Chiyoko had never seen them before.

"Who're they?"

Yubel wrapped a wing around her and pointed at the baby. "That's you."

"Sometimes there are babies in the world whose parents are dead," Juudai said, "and sometimes other people find those babies and decide to they want to be their parents because they don't want those babies to be all alone and sad."

"So those people in that photo are my parents but they died?" Chiyoko asked. "And now you're my parents?"

"Yes," Juudai said. He looked relieved.

"But they left me behind all alone, so they didn't love me?" She didn't even know the people in the photo, and she was still kind of angry with them.

"I'm sure they loved you very much, Chiyoko," Yubel said. "They died because they wanted to be sure you were safe."

Juudai and Yubel were also always trying to keep her safe. "Are you going to die?" she asked, suddenly worried. They couldn't, right? She shivered and tried to crawl deeper into Yubel's embrace.

Juudai chuckled. "We're going to try very hard not to, sweetheart."

"There are a lot of people who love you very much, and we love you most of all," Yubel whispered to her.

Chiyoko freed an arm to point at the picture again. "But they did too?" she asked.

"But they did too," said Juudai and Yubel together.

"So it's not a bad thing?"

"Those children in your class don't know any better, sweetie."

That had to be true, because those other kids only had two parents who loved them. Chiyoko looked at the picture. The people in it looked happy. If they'd been happy with her before they died, and Juudai and Yubel were happy with her now, that was good. She kind of wondered what they'd been like.

"Did you know them?"

"No. I wish we had." Juudai really looked like he regretted it. "But we know someone who did." He hesitated. "Do you want to meet him, Chiyoko?"

Chiyoko thought about it. "You won't be angry if I do?"

"Of course we won't be," Yubel said, and Juudai wrapped one arm around her and the other around Yubel, so she was cocooned between the two of them. Chiyoko nodded and made a decision.

"I think I want to. But not now, okay?" she felt safe now, wrapped between Juudai and Yubel.

Juudai kissed her on the head. "Whenever you want, sweetheart."

**oOoOo**

Chiyoko tugged at the hem of her dress impatiently. It was itchy and the color was a pale blue she absolutely hated, but grandma had insisted she wear it, because this was some kind of big party for all of Juudai's friends and she had to look nice. Even her hair had been braided. She didn't see the use. She barely knew most of those people. Manjoume-san was here, but he'd been too busy talking to some Very Important People to pay attention to her, and her bout of hide-and-seek with the Ojama trio had been cut short when they'd all been called inside for dinner.

"So chairman Pegasus is working on this new dueling mechanic," Hayato-san was telling Juudai "It's going to be like fusing monsters, but you won't need specific monsters for it."

Juudai seemed to find this very funny. "You mean Synchro monsters?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?" Hayato-san narrowed his eyes. "Actually, do I even want to know how?"

"Let's just say I got some insider information a couple of years ago. So how's it coming along?"

"It'll take another few years at least," Hayato-san said. "The card designs we've been making are amazing, though. You should come by Industrial Illusions one of these days."

"I definitely will!" Juudai didn't show any signs of ending the conversations soon. Chiyoko pulled at his jacket.

"I want to go outside," she told him. Juudai gave her a distracted look.

"Mmm, alright. Just don't go too close to the lake, okay? And be back by eight!"

She didn't need to be told twice. Chiyoko scampered off, through the double doors of the dining hall and outside, into the cool September air. This was where Juudai had gone to school. Chiyoko was still in primary school, but even though she liked dueling, she wasn't sure if she wanted to go to school here. It was so... big and far away from home. She neared the lake, ignoring Juudai's warnings, and sat down at the edge. She was going to ruin her dress, sitting down in the mud like this.

_Good riddance_ , she thought gleefully. She wished there was someone to play with her, but the Ojamas were with Manjoume-san now, and Hane Kuriboh was with Juudai. Pharaoh… Pharaoh would've liked it here, she thought, but a few months ago Yubel and Juudai had taken him with them to some other place. When they'd come back, Pharaoh wasn't there, and they'd told her he'd been old, and that he'd had to go away. She wished he were here. There were footsteps behind her, but she didn't look up. Now she just wanted to be alone for a bit.

"Aren't you a little young to be out here alo- Oh, hello, Chiyoko-chan."

Chiyoko squinted at the man. His face was obscured by the light coming from the dining hall behind him. "Are you a friend of Juudai, mister?" she asked.

"Ah, yes. My name is Misawa Daichi. He crouched down to her level and held out a hand. "It's nice to meet you, Chiyoko-chan."

She'd heard Juudai and Yubel talk about Misawa, usually when it involved different dimensions or when Leon or Trahern came to visit. "Do you know Leon and Trahern, Misawa-san?"

"Yes, I do. Your father introduced us. I have to say, they've been a great help. I can't believe we never thought about contacting Different Dimension monsters for our research before."

"What do you do?"

"We're trying to find a way to cross dimensions easily." Misawa-san found a stick and drew a circle in the mud, then another next to it, almost touching the first. "See, if each circle is a dimension-"

"You want to cross them," Chiyoko said, drawing a line through the spot where the circles almost connected. "But... But you need to find a weak point to do that, because if you don't it's dangerous." She didn't know how she knew that, but she was certain it was true.

"Very good." Misawa-san eyed her speculatively. "Now, the Different Dimension monsters can somehow cross dimensions easily, so Leon is trying to explain to us how he does it. He's not having much luck."

"You find the weak point, and then find a hole and walk through," Chiyoko said. Misawa-san laughed.

"That's what he said too. Unfortunately it doesn't help us much." He sighed. "And they just keep losing equipment all the time…"

"Lose? How?"

"They say it gets stolen, but-" Misawa shrugged. "Don't you worry about it, Chiyoko-chan."

"Hey, Misawa!" Juudai's voice came from behind them. "Are you teaching my daughter stuff I don't understand?"

"She's much better at it than you ever were," Misawa-san said without even looking up. Chiyoko self-consciously crouched down lower, hoping Juudai and Yubel wouldn't notice the mud on her dress.

"I'm not even going to ask what that means," Juudai asked, studying the drawing Misawa-san had made. "Taniya didn't come?"

"She's not in this dimension. I'll go see her next month."

"Who's Taniya?" Chiyoko whispered.

"His wife," Yubel answered. She frowned down at Chiyoko, then reached out to pull the tie from her braid. Chiyoko happily shook her hair loose. Far better. Yubel seemed to agree. She ran her claws through her hair to untangle any stray knots.

"Sooo," Juudai was saying. "No kids yet?"

"Juudai!" Misawa-san hissed. Even in the darkness, Chiyoko could see he'd gone bright red. "Chiyoko's eight!"

"Yeah, so she doesn't understand." He grinned. Understand what? Did Misawa-san not want children? "Well? Any plans?"

"Is that even possible?" Misawa-san asked, still beet-red.

"Sure it is," Juudai said, shrugging.

"It's happened before," Yubel said. "People from your world end up in other dimensions all the time. Half-spirit kids have existed for centuries. Unless they're really weak, they can stay tangible in this dimension, too."

"Huh," Misawa-san said in what Chiyoko called his thinky voice. Juudai shared a look with Yubel and grinned wider.

"Guess we'll be looking for presents then?"

"What? Juudai, stop it!"

"Just joking, just joking," Juudai said. "Chiyoko, didn't I tell you not to go too close to the lake?"

Chiyoko frowned. "The party was boring."

"No denying that," said Yubel.

"Your dress is all dirty. Grandma is going to be angry," Juudai told her, but he looked distracted. Chiyoko knew that look. It meant that Juudai and Yubel were talking to each other when she couldn't hear it. After a second he said, "Yes, I know. Mama'll still be angry."

"But it's  _blue_  and  _itchy_!" Chiyoko argued.

"What's wrong with blue?" asked a woman good-naturedly. "Hello Juudai, Misawa, ... Yubel."

"Hey, Asuka!" Juudai smiled. "Are we having our reunion here now?"

Asuka-san made a face. "Don't tell Fubuki. He'll bring the entire school." She smiled at Chiyoko. "Hello, Chiyoko-chan. You've grown a lot."

Chiyoko smiled back. She didn't see Asuka-san very often, but she was always very nice to her, and so was Fubuki-san.

"Hey, can we go inside? It's getting pretty cold out there and I'd rather have this reunion where I can see everyone's faces," Juudai said. There was a murmur of agreement, although Chiyoko heard Yubel whisper, "When's seeing in the dark ever been a problem to you?" just when she disappeared. Juudai picked up Chiyoko. She quickly wrapped her arms around his neck when he teetered for a second.

"You're getting heavy, kiddo."

"I can walk," Chiyoko told him with a pout.

"Can't I carry you once in a while? Let's get you inside and cleaned up a bit." He glanced over his shoulder. "Oh, Misawa, have you seen Chronos-sensei yet? I kinda want to introduce him to Trahern soon."

"That's a good idea," Misawa-san said. "I haven't seen him, though."

"I saw him talking to Manjoume before I went outside," Asuka-san cut in. Juudai nodded.

"Thanks. You guys want to come along?"

"Sure, why not?" Asuka said. "I've actually been wanting to talk to him for a while now."

Chiyoko yawned as Asuka-san started telling a long story about things she'd learned in America. It wasn't because it wasn't interesting, but she was so sleepy all of a sudden. She closed her eyes and rested her head on Juudai's shoulder, relaxing as he shifted his grip on her.

"She's asleep," she heard Misawa-san whisper, and Chiyoko wanted to say that, no, no she wasn't, but it seemed like so much effort to make and the dark was really far too nice.

**oOoOo**

Chiyoko woke up in Onkel Johan's house. She was very sure she hadn't gone to bed there last night. She sighed and threw off the covers. Yep. Same old story again.

" _God morgen_ , Chiyoko," Onkel Johan said when she silently padded into the living room. It was a joke between them, talking Norwegian, trying to see how long it would take for Juudai to give up on trying to understand them. Today, she wasn't in the mood. " _Vil du spise frokost?_ "

The thought of food was making her stomach protest. " _Nei takk, jeg er ikke sulten,_ " she said.

Onkel Johan put away the book he'd been reading and patted the spot next to him. "What's wrong?" he asked in Japanese. So this was going to be a serious conversation. Chiyoko sighed.

"Juudai and Yubel had to go away, didn't they?"

"I'm afraid so. They were called late last night. You were already asleep, so we didn't want to wake you up," Onkel Johan said gently. "They should be back before school starts again, don't worry."

Chiyoko sighed again and burrowed deeper between the pillows on the sofa. "It's just... I know it's important and all, but..."

"But?"

"They just leave without saying goodbye, and sometimes they're gone for weeks and weeks and I don't even know if they're okay! I'm not even allowed to go with them and I'm twelve!" she burst out. She hated waking up only to find that Juudai and Yubel had left without her. Only once in a while did they take her along, and then only when they were just visiting friends in other worlds and weren't in any danger. "I love them, but-"

"But you hate it when they leave you behind." Onkel Johan's expression was far too familiar. It was the same one she was wearing herself. "Believe me, every single one of their friends has felt that way. But it's okay to be worried, Chiyoko. They're your parents. They don't want to take you with them because they love you."

She hugged her knees. "I kind of wish I'd known my birth parents." Juudai and Yubel had introduced her to Leon a few years ago, who'd apparently known who her parents were, but even with all his stories she didn't feel like she knew them. "They're just... Strangers," she finished quietly.

"Does it matter to you?" Onkel Johan asked.

"Sometimes I wonder... I don't even know what name they gave me. I don't want to change anything!" she hastened to add. Juudai and Yubel were her real parents, no matter who'd given birth to her. "It's just that..."

"You're curious." Onkel Johan nodded. "That's normal, you know. My parents died when I was a toddler, and every day I wonder who they were and who I would have been if they'd raised me." He smiled softly. "But I have the Gem Beasts, and they're just as much my brothers and sisters as Juudai and Yubel are your parents. Don't you ever let anyone tell you that they're not your parents, okay? They love you a lot. Don't doubt that."

"I don't."

"I wish they'd stick around more too, but this is something they have to do. Juudai won't want it any other way," Onkel Johan said wistfully. It wasn't the first time he'd said something like that, or Manjoume or Asuka or even Juudai and Yubel themselves, for that matter. Chiyoko looked at the ceiling.

"Onkel Johan?"

"Yeah?"

"Who's the Supreme King?"

Onkel Johan froze. "I won't tell you that, Chiyoko. No buts," he said when Chiyoko opened her mouth to argue. "I'm not going to tell you you're too young to know, but it's not my place to tell you. That's something Juudai will have to tell you himself."

Protesting was going to be useless, Chiyoko realized. Onkel Johan's mouth was set in a straight line, face closed off. It was the same reaction she got from everyone whenever she brought up the topic.

"I'm going for a run," she said. If no one was going to tell her anything, she needed to get outside and do something. Anything. It wasn't even nine in the morning yet, and she was already tired of being inside.

"Take Topaz with you. He's been dying to go outside."

_I don't need a babysitter_ , she wanted to say, but knowing Onkel Topaz, there was a good chance he really just wanted to get outside. She nodded. At least he could keep up with her. Whenever she tried to run with anyone else, they either couldn't follow or got bored halfway through.

"Right." She jumped off the sofa and went back upstairs to change out of her pajamas and grab her running shoes. Her bag was a mess; clearly Juudai and Yubel had just grabbed whatever clothes they could find quickly and stuffed them inside. She finally found one of her favorite T-shirts and slipped it on, paying the wrinkles no mind. She'd change after running anyway.

Onkel Topaz was already waiting for her in the hallway by the time she'd changed; Onkel Johan must've told him. He gave her a toothy grin.

'Ready to lose, kid?"

"As if." She walked past him, tying her hair in a ponytail. "Just try to keep up."

And she was off, running out the door with Onkel Topaz hot on her heels. She could vaguely hear Onkel Johan shout at them to close the door, but she paid him no heed. Onkel Topaz passed her, and she picked up speed to catch up with him. Maybe there was no way she could win against a tiger, but at least this was something she was good at. Just for a little while, she didn't have to worry about Yubel and Juudai and whether this would be the time they'd come home injured, or worse - not at all. She'd have to deal with that one day, she knew.

But today was not that day.

**oOoOo**

"Did you finish it?" Hannah asked on the bus ride to school.

"Finish what?"

"Yesterday's physics homework," said Hannah plaintively. She and her father had moved to Japan only last year, and her dark red hair and nearly red eyes made her stand out even more than Chiyoko's own brown-blonde hair and grey eyes did. She was even taller than Chiyoko, who already stood above most of her classmates. It made her look older than she really was.

"Mmm? Oh yeah, it was pretty easy," Chiyoko replied. Hannah slumped.

"Says you. You're amazingly good at that stuff."

Chiyoko shrugged. School physics were easy. She'd much rather do something more complicated. Maybe instead of languages. Would they let her drop English and take more physics instead?

"Tell you what," she said, "I'll help you with physics during break if you help me during English."

Hannah smiled brightly. "How come you don't like English, though? Don't you know Norwegian or something?" she said.

"Yeah well, Norwegian's easy. English isn't."

Hannah laughed. Chiyoko leaned past her to look out the bus window. It was January, and she wasn't looking forward to leaving the warm bus and going outside. Last week, they'd spent two days without heating because some idiot had managed to disable the system. At least they'd been allowed to keep their coats on, but Chiyoko had been very tempted to take off her bracelet and spend the day unaffected by the cold. Hannah wouldn't even notice. She'd tried it one day on the way home, once she'd realized her friend could see spirits, and Hannah had continued talking to her, unaware that she wasn't entirely there anymore.

Still, it would've been more trouble than it was worth.

"Do you know which high school you're gonna go to?" Hannah asked. "I mean, I still don't know where to go. Dad says we can afford a private school, but I'm not sure."

"Domino senior high school for me," Chiyoko said. Hannah look surprised.

"Eh? You don't want to go to Duel Academia? Didn't your dad go there?"

"Dueling's fun, but-" Chiyoko trailed off. How could she explain that dueling was never just dueling for her family? That she was always afraid something would happen to her parents whenever they were away? That even when she was having fun, she was always trying to think of combos that could be useful if she had to fight herself?

"I'm just not that good," she finished feebly. "I wouldn't do very well there. Besides, I want to study physics, not dueling."

"Maybe I'll go to Domino too," Hannah said thoughtfully. "At least we'll have each other!" She smiled at Chiyoko and Chiyoko grinned back. Actually knowing someone when she went to a new school would be nice. She wouldn't have to bother explaining why only Juudai came to parent-teacher meetings, or why she didn't look like him.

Hannah's phone started ringing. She fumbled with it for a second, glanced at the caller ID and frowned.

"What is it? ... No, I'm on the bus. No- ... No, not now, of course not! It's January! ... Yes, I know you want to get it over with..." Her frown deepened. Chiyoko gave her a sympathetic look. "Will you listen to me? When term ends. ... Yes. ... Yes, soon, okay?"

She ended the call and put her phone away with more force than necessary. Chiyoko snorted.

"Your dad?"

"What? Ah, yeah..." Hannah busied herself with her schoolbag, not meeting Chiyoko's eyes. Another glimpse out of the window told Chiyoko they'd be reaching the school building soon. She started looking for her coat.

"Come on," she said as the bus slowed down and finally came to a stop. They had science third period and P.E. in the afternoon, and even though Chiyoko wasn't exactly happy about going outside in January weather, she was still looking forward to it. Better than English, at least. Which was second period. She groaned.

"Hey, you're still gonna help me with English, right?"

Hannah smiled somewhat tremulously. "Of course."

**oOoOo**

Spring came, and with it school break. So of course, on the last day of the school year, Chiyoko got detention. She was still angry about it when Juudai and Yubel appeared right next to her, and it gave her more cause to grumble.

"Can't you guys take a car or something?"

"Can't drive, don't see why I should bother," Juudai said. He studied her right cheek, where she knew she was sporting a fairly massive bruise from the fight. "Chiyoko, what happened? First we get a call from the principal that you've been in a fight, and just now we get a call from your friend that we shouldn't be angry with you."

"Yeah well, he was insulting Hannah. He asked for it."

" _So you fought him_ ," Yubel said, voice utterly neutral.

"Of course I did. Who do you take me for?"

"Violence isn't going to solve your problems."

Chiyoko resisted the urge to roll her eyes. As if she hadn't heard that one a million times before. "What would you know?" she muttered. Juudai froze. When he spoke again, his voice was cold and distant.

"Take it from me. It only makes things worse."

Chiyoko looked up. His eyes were doing the thing again where they suddenly changed color, but now there wasn't any provocation for it. He wasn't even using his powers.

" _Juudai, snap out of it._ "

Juudai looked up abruptly, and his eyes faded back to their normal brown.

"I- Yes, of course." He ran a hand through his hair. "So he insulted Hannah and you decided to fight him. I take it he got a hit in?"

Chiyoko's cheeks flamed with embarrassment. He shouldn't have been able to. She was faster than him and a better fighter, and even then he'd managed to graze her cheek before they'd been pulled apart. "I could've taken him," she mumbled.

" _Maybe you could've, and then what? What if there's a bigger opponent, or a better- trained one? You have no experience in a fight, Chiyoko. So don't go looking for one._ " Yubel and Juudai briefly made eye-contact. " _You're grounded for the weekend._ "

"Hannah and I were going to see a movie!" Chiyoko protested. They were really going to ground her right when break was starting? How was that fair?

"You'll have to reschedule," Juudai said. "This is non-negotiable, Chiyoko."

Oh, whatever. "Let's go home already," she grumbled. Stupid bullies and stupid school and stupid detentions. She didn't react when Juudai touched her shoulder, and when she got home, mere seconds later, she locked herself in her room before anyone tried to scold her more.

_Gotta take a raincheck_ , she texted Hannah.  _Grounded_.

She threw the phone on her bedside table and wondered when they'd come to take that away too. She had absolutely no intention of spending the weekend inside, but Juudai and Yubel being who they were, she'd never be able to make it past the front door. Her phone buzzed, and she picked it up again.

_:( u rly cant make it?_

She was about to text back with a no when a glint of silver caught her eye. Her bracelet, ever-present. She frowned at it. If she took it off...

_i might, meet me halfway_ , she texted quickly, then got up and unclasped the bracelet. If she was careful now, she could get outside unnoticed. It was a risk. If Juudai and Yubel caught her, she wouldn't see the outside of her room until school started again. But she'd been looking forward to this movie for weeks.

Mind made up, Chiyoko opened her window slightly, threw the bracelet outside and walked straight through the outside wall. It was a long way down, but in spirit form, she took no damage from it. She spent a few too many minutes looking for where her bracelet had landed, but finally found it half hidden next to a street light. After that, it was just a matter of meeting up with Hannah as fast as possible. Fortunately, Hannah had followed her advice, and she saw her friend jogging towards her after just a few minutes.

"You made it!" she said happily when she spotted Chiyoko. "How'd you get out?"

"I sneaked past them," Chiyoko lied. "Ready to go?"

"Sure!" Hannah checked her watch. "Hey, we've still got about an hour before the movie starts. Wanna go to my place first? Have you eaten yet?"

"Sure!" She was kind of hungry, and she didn't feel like waiting an hour outside the theater. Hannah nodded and they walked in silence until they reached the apartment block where Hannah and her dad lived.

"Dad's not home," Hannah said when they entered the apartment. That wasn't uncommon. Chiyoko couldn't remember ever seeing him, though the apartment was usually filled with pictures of him and Hannah when she looked about ten. She entered the apartment as her friend flicked the light switch. Nothing happened.

"Eh? How weird," Hannah said, staring at the light switch as if that was going to make it work.

"Electricity out?" Chiyoko asked.

"Must be." Hannah shrugged and opened a drawer filled with candles. Moments later, she'd lighted several of them and put them in strategic places across the room. Chiyoko hadn't even seen her take any matches.

Hannah gestured at the sofa. "I'm just gonna get some drinks. You want anything?"

"Whatever you have," Chiyoko said. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of Hannah taking bottles in the kitchen. Hannah returned moments later with orange juice and Chiyoko drank deeply. The adrenaline of her escape and her run to meet up with Hannah had made her thirsty.

"I'll go get something to eat," Hannah said, leaving Chiyoko on the sofa again. She took another sip and frowned at the bitter aftertaste.

_Maybe it's gone bad_ , she thought.

Then she passed out.

**oOoOo**

"So the Supreme King trusts his daughter with strangers. How naïve."

Chiyoko groaned and struggled to sit upright. The room was dark, except for one glowing red light that cast an eery glow over her surroundings. She tried to move her hands, only to find them cuffed.

"Don't bother, child. Just sit there quietly until daddy comes looking for you," her kidnapper said, voice heavy. He moved, and the red light moved with him. His eyes, Chiyoko realized with a shock. No, eye. Just one. Who was he? Better yet, what was he?

"What do you want from me?" she asked, surreptitiously trying to twist her hands around the handcuffs chaining her to the wall behind her. She'd taken off her bracelet, so why were these cuffs even holding her?

Light suddenly flooded the room, and Chiyoko got her first good look at her kidnapper. Huge and wooden, with just the one red, mechanical eye in the middle of what passed as his head. A machine, but not one she'd ever seen before.

"I've already got everything I want from you," he said, and only now did Chiyoko catch the glimpse of silver in his hand. Her bracelet. But how-

"That's mine! Give it back!"

"I don't think you're in any position to demand anything."

"How did you-" Chiyoko paused. Without her bracelet, she should've been able to escape easily. Heck, he shouldn't even have been able to cuff her. So that meant... "Where are we?"

The man nodded approvingly. "Your father would call it the ninth dimension. Of course, that's not what it's called, but do you think he ever bothered to find out?"

Ninth… Ninth was where Leon and Trahern lived. If she could just escape, she might be able to find help. They could contact Misawa-san if she could find them. Time to stall.

"Why did you take me here? What do you have against me?" she asked, testing the give of the handcuffs. No use. The metal wouldn't budge.

"Against you? Nothing at all."

"Then why-"

"There are people who would pay very good money for that bracelet of yours," he said conversationally, tossing up her bracelet and catching it again. "The ability to go to your world? To be solid in it? Think of the possibilities."

Chiyoko scowled. "Okay, you've got it. Why keep me, then?" she said. She hated having to give up her bracelet, but Juudai could make a new one easily. Her first priority was to get out.

"I don't care for it," the man said simply.

Oh, come  _on_. "You just said you wanted to sell it!"

"No, I said some people would pay good money for it. But seeing how neither of us are going to live through this, what's the use?"

Chiyoko froze. He was planning to kill her. She'd known Juudai and Yubel had enemies, but, stupidly, she'd never thought they'd target her. He'd said she wasn't going to live through this. He'd said-

"Neither of us?" she managed, timidly.

"I will kill you. Then your parents will kill me. It's very simple, girl."

No, that wasn't simple at all! Chiyoko made a frustrated noise.

"Look, if you let me go I'm sure we'll all be fine-"

"You really don't get it, do you?" the man interrupted again. "Yuuki Juudai killed my daughter. Do you want to hear how she died?"

"I… No, I-"

"He tore her to pieces," the man continued mercilessly. "Crushed her until there was nothing left of her but splinters. I couldn't even give her a funeral because there was nothing left of her to bury. She was barely older than you are." He turned away. "That's the kind of person your father is. He kills people and he doesn't even remember them."

"That's not true! You don't even know him!"

"And you do?" said a soft voice. One that was far too familiar.

"Hannah? He's got you too? Are you okay?! If you hurt her..." she growled at the man.

"So you remember I exist," Hannah said sadly. Her voice sounded different. Older. She walked into view, and unlike Chiyoko, she wasn't tied up or restrained in any way. "Shinobu, remember our deal."

"You're working with  _him_?" Chiyoko shrieked. "I thought we were friends!"

"Daughter of Yuuki Juudai, and you think you can ever actually have friends? Please, Chiyoko, I know you're not that naïve."

"Ah, but he never told her," the man, now identified as Shinobu, said. He tossed her bracelet at Hannah, who caught it with her left hand. "She doesn't even know how her father killed Shu, or how he killed your mother, Hannah."

"Juudai didn't do that!"

As if chased away by her words, all the light suddenly vanished from the room. Shinobu chuckled. "Looks like we've got company," he said. He walked over to Chiyoko and unchained the cuffs from the wall. "Let's go meet them."

He pulled her along and outside, followed closely by Hannah. Chiyoko tried to turn her head.

"You don't have to do this. I'm sure it's just some misunderstanding," she told Hannah desperately. What little she could see of Hannah's face looked sad.

"It isn't, and I have to, Chiyoko. I'm sorry."

"Haou!" Shinobu shouted the moment they were outside. "Where are you!"

"Right here." Juudai warped out of the shadows. Chiyoko had seen him do it a thousand times before, but this time he looked different. The darkness was still clinging to him, and she couldn't even see where one ended and the other began. And his eyes- His eyes were icy, bright gold. Yubel was right beside him and even she looked different, wings fully extended, eyes glowing brightly, and the same darkness that clung to Juudai swirling around her. For a moment, Chiyoko was scared of her own parents.

"You let her go and you get to live," Yubel said.

"Why?" Shinobu produced a knife from out of nowhere and pressed it against Chiyoko's throat. Chiyoko's eyes widened, and she tried very hard not to squirm. "My daughter never got a chance. Why should she?"

"Shinobu, we had a deal," Hannah hissed. Shinobu ignored her. Juudai looked furious, but with the knife almost cutting into Chiyoko's throat, neither he nor Yubel moved.

"Hannah." Juudai said coldly. Out of the corner of her eyes, Chiyoko saw her eyes widen, but she squared her shoulders and looked straight at Juudai. "So tell me, who are you really? Because clearly you're not a friend of my daughter."

"As if she can ever have real friends with someone like you as her father!" She turned to Chiyoko. "Better be prepared for that, Chiyoko, because there's never going to be anyone you can trust. Your entire life, you're never gonna have friends because you're always gonna have to wonder if they're just out to use you! That's what your parents are doing to your life!"

"Not true..." Chiyoko whispered. That couldn't be true. Hannah had been her friend.

"Oh, of course," Juudai said, just loud enough for them to hear. "You're only half-human, aren't you, Hannah? How old are you really?"

"Eighteen."

What?!

"So you were two..." Something in Juudai's eyes softened. "Who'd I kill?"

"My mother. Blazing Hita." Hannah choked on the last word. Juudai looked away from her.

"I'm sorry. I don't remember."

"Juudai," Yubel hissed, but Juudai relaxed his stance. "But Shinobu, you're one of those machine ninjas who fought against the warriors, aren't you?" he said. "I do remember your daughter, and believe me when I say I never wanted to kill her. I regret it to this very day."

"Not good enough, Haou," Shinobu said. And he raised the knife and  _slashed_.

There was a whirl of dark as Juudai disappeared. There was Yubel, flying towards them, claws outstretched, and a scream of "NO!" and a flash of heat, but the knife never reached Chiyoko. Instead, she felt metal in her hands and her handcuffs dropping right through her.

"We had a deal, Shinobu!" Hannah was screaming, and her hands- Were her hands on fire? "We've got Haou, so she walks! She's got nothing to do with this!"

Chiyoko tried to reach out to her, but then darkness surrounded her and seconds later she was on the other side of the field, with Juudai and Yubel both hugging her.

"Are you okay?!" Juudai tilted her head back to study her throat. "Did they hurt you?!"

"No, I-" She stared at her hands. Her bracelet. Hannah had given her her bracelet, and in the spirit world, instead of making her solid, it made her intangible.

There was a blast of fire that was clearly aimed for Juudai. Chiyoko saw Hannah, her hands still holding onto the fire as if she was born in it. Maybe she was. She was also crying.

"Hannah, stop!" Chiyoko screamed, but Yubel pulled her back as Juudai charged. Chiyoko watched, horrified, but the fight was ridiculously one-sided. Within minutes, Juudai had subdued both Shinobu and Hannah.

"Are you done?" he asked, tone cold. He didn't wait for an answer. "I would love to kill you both right now. You took my daughter and almost killed her. Don't think I will ever forgive you for that."

"He- He really did kill Hannah's mom...?" Chiyoko asked. She couldn't believe it. But looking at him now, at the way he talked and acted, she could almost see someone far more terrible.

"He did. And it was partly my fault." Yubel closed her wings around the two of them. "I'm sorry, Chiyoko. That's the Supreme King."

"But for Chiyoko's sake. I won't kill you," Juudai continued. "Go back to that house of yours, get your stuff, and disappear." He stepped back, and a second later he was standing next to her and Yubel, and Hannah and Shinobu could move again. They got up gingerly, both looking at Juudai with hateful eyes, but they seemed to follow his advice. As Chiyoko watched, they re-entered the house.

"Come on, let's go back," Juudai said softly, but Chiyoko took several steps back in the direction of the hut. Hannah had just been using her, but she'd also saved her life. She hadn't wanted Chiyoko to die.

"Come on, Chiyoko, it's not safe here." Yubel called softly. Chiyoko shook her head and wrinkled her nose at the smell of smoke wafting by.

Wait, smoke?

"No..." Suddenly she knew, with horrifying clarity, what was going on. "Hannah!"

She was off running before either of her parent realized what was happening and reached the house just when the flames started licking outside. Stupid! She couldn't just commit suicide like that! Chiyoko ran into the house, grateful for her bracelet now, because wrenching open the door would be wasting time she couldn't afford to waste.

"Hannah!"

But it wasn't Hannah she found first. Shinobu was sitting at the table, the wood of his body half burned away already, and he stared at her impassively as she stormed in.

"Other room," he only said.

"You-"

"Other room, Yuuki Chiyoko," he only said. She nodded and moved. Her parents were shouting for her, trying to follow her but deterred by the fire, but she had to go on now, had to find Hannah, even when the house was creaking and-

And Hannah was in the other room, like Shinobu'd told her. She was sitting on the ground, flames all around her without actually touching her, and taking deep breaths. Breathing in smoke.

"Hannah, come on! Let's get out!"

"Fire can't actually touch me. The only way I can die is by suffocating," Hannah said, and went right back to breathing smoke.

"Come ON!" Chiyoko tried to grab her arm, but with her bracelet, she went right through. Dark was swirling around her, seeping through gaps, Juudai coming to get her, but she couldn't leave Hannah here.

The ceiling collapsed. Chiyoko dropped her bracelet, grabbed Hannah, and  _shifted_.

She'd never done this before, but it was so, so easy. Find a weak spot and walk right through. Go from one world to another. Run away to save someone.

They reappeared, and Hannah immediately dropped to her knees, coughing painfully. Chiyoko held her through it while she slowly tried to take in their surroundings. They were next to a river somewhere, on a rocky outcropping with a small group of trees not too far away. It was a beautiful world, but one that was completely unfamiliar to her.

Hannah's coughing subsided. Chiyoko helped her up and took her to the river to drink.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asked quietly; Hannah wiped a few stray droplets of water away.

"Why'd you save me," she asked, voice hoarse, and immediately started coughing again. Chiyoko waited until she was fine to reply.

"I just didn't want you to die."

"You're a better person than your father, Chiyoko."

"So it's true? He really-"

"Killed my mother? Yeah." The bitterness in her voice was back. She'd never forgive Juudai.

"What about your dad," she whispered. "Does he know you're here? Did he know of all... this?"

Hannah laughed bitterly. "My dad? He's been dead for years. Committed suicide when I was ten."

"What?!"

"Couldn't bear it anymore. I've been going from foster family to foster family ever since. And then one day I met Shinobu. Befriended you, waited until tonight. Shinobu's from Nine, so that's where we took you. He'd stolen some stuff from the portal scientists working there and set up a gateway.

"And you went to my school..." Chiyoko looked down. "That time when I took off my bracelet… You knew I was a spirit all along, didn't you?"

"It was pretty obvious."

"You should go," Chiyoko decided suddenly. "Juudai and Yubel will be here soon. They won't be happy."

Hannah didn't argue. She got up gingerly and held out a hand.

"I do hope you have a good life, Chiyoko," she said, and she looked sincere. Chiyoko shook her hand.

"Be safe, Hannah."

And Chiyoko sat down on a rock and watched as Hannah slowly walked downstream, following the river. Yubel and Juudai arrived just minutes later, frantic and looking terrified for her. Chiyoko let them fuss.

"Interesting place you picked to go to," Juudai said after he'd calmed down somewhat. Chiyoko was still staring at the horizon, where Hannah's outline was still visible. She knew Juudai'd seen her too, but he made no move to go after her.

"Why, what's so special about it?" She looked away from Hannah and at a passing Rainbow Fish.

"Brings back memories," Juudai said. "Are you sure you're okay, Chiyoko?"

"Hannah was right, wasn't she? Any friends I have, they're always just going to want to use me."

"No," Yubel said abruptly. "She was wrong, Chiyoko. Maybe some people will, but there are so many people who like you for  _you._ Don't forget that."

"Maybe you should learn to defend yourself properly, though..." Juudai said thoughtfully. "It might help. Might keep you from punching too many people too." His grin wasn't back full force yet, but it was something resembling normal. "How do you feel about karate?"

She and Hannah would never be friends after this, even if they saw each other again. But maybe Yubel was right. Maybe there were other people out there.

She leaned back and both of her parents wrapped an arm around her.

"Sure, why not? Sounds fun."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here ends Chiyoko's story for now. As for the parts in Norwegian:
> 
> Onkel/Tante: Uncle/Aunt
> 
> God morgen: Good morning
> 
> Vil du spise frokost?: Do you want breakfast?
> 
> Nei takk, jeg er ikke sulten: No thanks, I'm not hungry.
> 
> Questions, comments and concrit are always welcome!


End file.
